By Terho Valkonen, Finland, about his first Community Impact Experience
Today we had our first Cultural impact day! My group visited in St. Francis Center. It’s a place where homeless people can get food, clothes, take a shower and make phone calls. Homeless people can also use the address of the center as their home address so then they can be available somehow. Total visits by quests to center are more than people on an average day.
First we discussed about homelessness with Tom Luehrs who is the Executive Director of the Center. He has made a long work career as helper of the homeless people so he really knew what he was talking about. In his opinion the most important thing that you can give to homeless people is hope.
One of our tasks was to help volunteers and workers of the center to do laundry. There was also a stock where homeless people can save their personal items. We helped to check that the archive is still valid.
Because there is quite cold now in Denver there was some ice in the front of the center. So we broke the ice and for me as a Finnish person it felt very familiar job.
At the end of the day we had the possibility to discuss with one guy who is the guest of the center. That was very good experience! It got me to understand that it’s not always up to you if you are living on the street or not. You will never know where the faith leads us so that’s why we should take care about those people whose things are worse than ours right now!
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