I've just spent 4 nights at Crisis Christmas. There were lots of wonderful people, both guests and helpers, and many stories that could be told... but would probably be better face to face. Including a barrel of beer that got "borrowed" from a nearby hotel.
At the centre I was at, there were about 350 guests spending the night, getting fed, and receiving medical care, showers, new clothes, counselling, advice, access to the internet, and so on. This runs on (a) huge numbers of volunteers and (b) fantastic amounts of donations from businesses, starting with a vacant building, down through equipment, clothes, food, all the way down to paper cups.
My main occupation was in the kennels, looking after guests' dogs. Getting my face licked a lot. That symbolises the experience as a whole, maybe. We get as much out of it as the guests do in every way. They entertain, enlighten, love, and support us.
One person was telling me how he became homeless. It's not a difficult journey: his successful business began to make a loss; a failing business leads to drinking and depression, which makes things worse; debt, drinking and depression lead to breakup of long-term relationship; and with that also goes the house. You take that first drink, the rest of the steps follow. We're all closer than we realise.
The volunteers are all kinds of people, all ages, all levels of experience. They gradually become a team. The night-shift team, on from roughly 22:30 to 08:30. The system is organised so that nobody has to do anything they're not up to, and never on their own.
And then, after the last night shift, a massive session from 09:30 to 19:00 in the pub, to get "adjusted" back to normal clock time. The pub didn't know what had hit it....
