Hello and happy Friday! I have been home for two days now due to inclement weather and I really miss all of my friends and co-workers at the City of Refuge. Perhaps you would like a virtual tour of our building?
Welcome to the City of Refuge! The white desk to the right is our front receptionist desk where volunteers greet our friends and donors alike. The volunteers often bring laptops and study materials if they are students. Other volunteers find a bag of donations and sort out things that would be appropriate for our refugee friends. Items that would not be used by our refugees are stored and later sold at the City of Refuge garage sale. The garage sale profits are invested back into helping our friends.
The wooden door to the left opens up to our refugee "store" where our friends go shopping for basic needs items. The bookcase to the left of the door is chock full of fun children's books and, hidden from view, is a comfy couch just right for waiting!
Let's go into the store, shall we? This is a large room and is multi-functional. Every weekend EVERYTHING in this room is wheeled out and deposited into the office wing so that a church can use it. This happens every weekend and is very labor intensive. I would love to see us in a larger facility that has a community room for churches and meetings. What you see here is about half of the room.
Let's walk to the back of the room! Here is our classroom area, partitioned off with a movable curtain. In this room we have financial literacy class, English class, homework helpers, sewing class, and more! Since I am dreaming out loud, I would love it if we had multiple classrooms! It is a big task for our office manager as she juggles the classroom schedule to fit our many needs.
I didn't get a picture of the Basic Needs closet which is usually locked. In this room we have items that we have to monitor; our friends are requested to take only one item of each thing that they need. In this closet are things like shampoo, diapers, soap, popular food staples, new bedding, and more. I took a picture of our flyer about Basic Needs items. As a side note, at Christmas an area church donated boxes and boxes of Basic Care kits for our friends. The stack of boxes was heart-warming and awe inspiring!
This is our kitchen. Obviously it is not being used as a kitchen; it is our staging zone for donations. Here items are sorted and then carried to storage or to the store. In a perfect world we would have another large room for sorting so that the staff could use the kitchen for kitchen-y things? Wouldn't it be fun to have cooking classes? Did you know that some of our new friends are from third world countries or tent cities. They have to learn how to use appliances and kitchen tools that we automatically know how to use. A staff break room would be fabulous too. Just dreaming now, but wouldn't it be great if the kitchen was industrial and commercially certified so that potential business owners could use it for their startups? What a fun thought!
Let's continue walking around and to the left. The reception area is behind me and the kitchen is at the back of the photo and to the right. To the left of the kitchen is an office area for our executive director. The door in the corner is our childcare room, and then there are more office spaces. I don't have office pictures because they were all being used. Most of our office spaces are home to three or four staff members. Most of us just float around between desks as they are open.
The table in the middle is where our volunteers help our friends on Mondays and Fridays when we have "Open House". Our friends come in to get help with issues like name changes (simplified upon becoming US citizens or marriage), medical bill issues, and more. Some need help making sure that they have their checks properly written and others just want to make sure that a stack of mail is indeed all junk mail. The needs vary and are all equally important.
We are SO blessed by this lovely building but our needs are quickly outgrowing what we have. Next to the City of Refuge is a lovely park and walking trail owned by the Columbia Housing Authority. It is exciting to hear that 24 more units will be going up on that corner but it also means that life will drastically change for us. We will be sharing our driveway with more than just school traffic. Life could get interesting soon because the park has colorful little flags all over it. If you are interested in reading about the amazing story behind the new housing project you can read an article. Once again, the Veterans United Foundation has reached out to help the people in our community. They have helped the City of Refuge as well!
And of some have compassion, making a difference: Jude 1:22 KJV
Click here to find out more about volunteer opportunities at City of Refuge.
All opinions expressed here are solely mine and are not a reflection of the opinions
of the Americorp VISTA program or of City of Refuge in Columbia, MO
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