The past 3 months have been a roller coaster here at the shelter as we have navigated the difficulties of COVID-19. While hard, this time has made me extremely proud of our volunteers, clients, and staff as they figured out creative solutions, compromised, and made sure everyone was taken care of. While the next few months will be a lot of work, I am confident in our ability to handle it.
Our number one focus during this time has been the safety of our volunteers, clients, and staff. Every decision we have made has been under the guidance of the health department and with much discussion from Shelter Leadership. With the restrictions around North Carolina beginning to loosen, we want to touch base with our meal providers to give an update.
We have continued to feed our clients who are living in shelter but to protect these clients, we discontinued feeding the outside community back in March and started doing a weekly drive through pantry. As of June 8, we will welcome back our outside community to the dining room but in a separate feeding time to continue to protect our shelter clients.
We have put in place some guidelines for volunteers to protect them, clients, and staff. Most of these are laid out in the letter below from Tara Bryant, please read it carefully. We know many of our groups are used to doing things a certain way but we look forward to working together on adhering to these guidelines for the safety of everyone.
Our original guidelines for groups coming in still holds true.
- Groups that do not feel comfortable coming in can continue staying home. Many of these groups have continued to make sure our people get fed by ordering a meal in or financially sponsoring a meal.
- Many groups have started coming back to serve.
As many of our clients find their incomes cut by this situation, we will continue to bridge the gap for our hungry neighbors and will need continued help with meals. We have also seen an explosion in the need for pantry boxes, the list of needs for that is below.
If you need to contact us about your meal date or any questions, call us at 704-261-3491 or meals@unionshelterorg.
Thank you so much for how you love our neighbors!
Victoria Maye
Onsite Operations Director
