Winter Shelter
29th April 2019
Maroondah Winter Shelter is an initiative of Wesley Mission in Ringwood and sees 6 local churches, now 7, cooperating to host 10 to 12 homeless local men, each church providing a dry, warm place to sleep, an evening meal and break-fast for one night per week during the winter months.
With support from Fr Jose we have agreed to host on Friday evenings. The men have all been vetted by United Wesley in Ringwood and each must sign a contract confirming their agreement to a stringent set of requirements de-signed to ensure the safety of all volunteers and the other guests. The men are brought in by bus after having been assessed each evening at the collection point.
Holy Spirit joins Maroondah Winter Shelter
Maroondah Winter Shelter is an initiative of Wesley Mission in Ringwood and sees 6 local churches, now 7, cooperating to host 10 to 12 homeless local men, each church providing a dry, warm place to sleep, an evening meal and break-fast for one night per week during the winter months.
With support from Fr Jose we have agreed to host on Friday evenings. The men have all been vetted by United Wesley in Ringwood and each must sign a contract confirming their agreement to a stringent set of requirements de-signed to ensure the safety of all volunteers and the other guests. The men are brought in by bus after having been assessed each evening at the collection point.
Since we are a Child Safe parish, Risk Assessments have been completed by the parish, school and Outside School Hours Care groups and all concerns addressed to ensure that there can be no worries about having the guests and the children on the same site. So how do we do this? Well for a start we need your support and prayers for our success.
We need about 14 volunteers for each night to do well defined roles like bus driving, preparing dinner, serving dinner, socialising, monitoring, preparing breakfast and cleaning up. Wesley provides comprehensive training which every volunteer must attend. Volunteers must have a Working With children check and a National Police check and must be over 18 years old. If needed, apart from the age, we can help with getting the checks performed.
We also need donations of hot food and deserts on the night. Cash donations are also useful as the group needs to buy a mobile shower facility and a bigger trailer. More information is available on the web site https://wintershelter.org.au/ or Google "Winter Shelter".
Silvio on behalf of Parish Leadership Team.
A short animation that shows Winter Shelter at work in 2018.