Over the weekend, we learned that Joel Johnson, who came to GMC almost every day, was killed as he slept outside St. Luke’s Mission Center in Glover Park. The mood here at GMC is somber and contemplative. We are all wondering who would have done such a thing, and it is a sobering thought that an attack like this could happen to any of our guests who sleep on the street.
I don’t want to remember Joel as a homeless man. He was a gentle man who came to our Center almost every day. He was polite, reserved, and certainly a man of few words. Though we never got to know him well, we all liked him and thought of him as a positive addition to our program.
Joel slept where so many homeless people sleep, exposed to whatever the danger that lingers just around the corner. We lost a good friend who happened to be without a home.
Some of us knew Joel from the Center or from our winter shelter two years ago. Others knew Joel from the Saturday and Sunday dinners that are sponsored and hosted by several Georgetown congregations. We hope you will spare a moment to remember our friend and to keep all of our guests in your thoughts.
We are looking for a Fundraising Coordinator to join our team and help us grow the organization. Please pass along the job description to anyone who may be a good fit!
Sixth graders from Georgetown Day School visited GMC on April 8 to distribute sandwiches and learn about homelessness. Staff talked to the students about why people are homeless, what GMC does to help them, and what other ways to help exist. When they went back to school, the class reflected on what they learned and shared it with us. Read their thoughts below the picture!
Georgetown Day School 6th graders with GMC’s Communications Director, Stephanie
What we learned:
There are many cool things in Georgetown such as shops and food, but some people have trouble seeing the people on the street. Georgetown Ministry Center notices these homeless people and takes them in and helps them.
Georgetown Ministry Center provides a daytime shelter for homeless single adults. They provide hot showers and laundry machines. They also provide computers for people to contact their families and keep updated on current events and social media. Georgetown Ministry Center also provides an outreach program where doctors go around the community checking on the homeless community. We met doctor Michael Morse, a physiatrist, who helps people get over their addictions and helps them with their feelings and depressions.
While Georgetown Ministry Center is a daytime shelter, they also have volunteers from Georgetown University to help them with night time shifts. The volunteers are students and faculty. During the nights that are below freezing they check on the homeless to make sure they don’t have hypothermia. They also pass out hats, gloves, socks, blankets, and we have heard of situations where they have saved lives.
During the winter months of November through March, Georgetown Ministry Center invites ten people to stay at a night time shelter. They try to invite five women and five men, these people are continuously rotated between ten different churches. People are invited if they are either ready for housing, ready for a job, or in bad health.
Our Reflection:
When we walked into the building we saw a few people sitting around at tables either drinking coffee or at the computers. We made sandwiches and passed them out. It was kind of scary, but it was nice to see the smiles on their faces. The reason it was scary was because not a lot of them looked happy. It was a large change from our regular environment. Overall, we felt empowered because we took a step out of our comfort zone and helped a community. Thank you Georgetown Ministry Center and the homeless community.
Last January, GMC partnered with Georgetown University’s Center for Social Justice to create a volunteer Hypothermia Outreach Team (HOT) to do street outreach on the coldest nights and to make sure that those living on the street in our community are safe.
WAMU featured the Hypothermia Outreach Team in a segment today. We think this is required listening and hope you will share it with your friends and family! It does a great job of telling the story and showing the interactions between our volunteers and those who stay on the streets.
