For most people, winter is a season of joy. It's a time for celebration and family unity. Winter brings memories of sitting by a fire, and sleeping in a bed with two, maybe three blankets piled high.
Yet when the temperatures drop, many families in the Champlain Valley face the concerns of how they will survive another brutal Vermont winter.
On Monday, Nov. 16 the National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week began, a week dedicated to confronting a trend that is becoming all too common.
They just want a bed
The Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) is a Burlington-based organization dedicated to giving homeless families and individuals a place to get out of the cold, among other things.
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COTS Main Street office in downtown Burlington.
(Photo by Megan Davin) |
As with many other shelters across the country, COTS is running at full capacity, says Arly Scully ’07, COTS representative.
“We are working to get funds from the state,” Scully says. “All the shelters are running at maximum capacity and overflow. If we don’t do something immediate and drastic… someone may freeze to death
this winter on the streets.”
Since COTS does not have enough beds to fill its demand this year, it sometimes has had to accept
overflow, Scully says.
While having people sleep on couches and in chairs is not an ideal situation, “it is important that no one
will sleep in the streets,” she says.
What is there to eat?
While COTS may provide the necessity of shelter, it is not all that these families and individuals need.
The Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf looks to fill this gap by providing food to as many people as it
can.
Currently, there are about 2,500 to 3,000 families who have asked the food shelf to provide them with
a turkey for Thanksgiving, Director Rob Meehan says.
With such a great demand for food this winter, the Food Shelf finds itself low on donations.
“It’s a tough spot to be in,” Meehan says, “but we are doing our best to be innovative.”
Last year, the food shelf had one of its largest food drives collecting over 20,000 pounds of food,
Meehan says.
This year, the organization only raised a little over 7,000 pounds of food.
"We are hopeful that people will dig deep," says Rob Meehan, director of Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf. |
Meehan believes that this drop in donations is a direct result of the current state of the economy, he says.
As well as stocking its own shelves, the Food Shelf is also
always looking to run food drives. While the main goal of a food drive is to receive food donations, they also can teach people about hunger and its tie-in with poverty, Meehan says.
“[Being jobless] is the reason people go hungry,” he says.
While the needs this winter will be tough to meet, Meehan believes that the Food Shelf will be able to meet them.
“We are hopeful that people will dig deep,” he says.
Students raise awareness with their peers
Throughout Hunger and Homelessness week, students at St. Michael’s College will be doing what they
can to raise awareness and money.
There will be a shack set up outside in the quad all week long, where students can sign up to spend a night, or a couple of hours. It is sponsored by the Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts (MOVE).
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Dean of Students Mike Samara, along with 10 percent of the campus community wore a T-shirt on Monday, Nov. 17 to represent the 10 percent of Vermonters who will visit a food shelf every year.
(Photo by Cailey McDermott) |
The sign-up sheets are located outside the MOVE office.
The students will experience just a bit of what it would be like to sleep outside with little to no shelter in freezing temperatures, while at the same time raising the awareness of their classmates to the issues at hand, says sophomore Katherine Hackett, who plans on spending a night in the shack.
“Being in the shack isn’t the real deal, but it makes people
at least feel what it is like to be homeless,” Hackett says. “At St. Michael’s, people don’t realize just how cold it is. The campus is so small; people are only outside
for five minutes or so. People don’t get a chance to be cold.”
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