Making the Most of Generous Volunteers: Our Night Site Partners  Room at the Inn operates with nearly 60 locations in St. Louis County. However, most of these locations are in use only one night a month. It is an uncommon structure, and it is one of Room at the Inn’s greatest strengths!
Room at the Inn operates with one central location – where clients are based during the day – and nearly 60 night sites – at interfaith congregations throughout St. Louis County and beyond.
Every evening, volunteers from Room at the Inn’s partner congregations transport our clients to their congregation, where they provide an evening meal, companionship and a safe place to sleep. In the morning, they provide breakfast and transportation back to the location in Bridgeton. This generous outreach by our partner congregations allows Room at the Inn to operate efficiently.
More importantly, Room at the Inn gives people a chance to help someone directly.
By working with more than 600 volunteers throughout St. Louis County and St. Charles County, Room at the Inn gives these caring people – of more than 20 different faith traditions – a chance to do something real and meaningful to help the homeless.
Let’s face it: homelessness is a huge problem, and no one person can do much to solve it. But any of the volunteers at our host congregations can tell you that one person can make a real difference in the life of a homeless person. By making a special dinner, or chatting with a young mother or playing with a child, our volunteers show our homeless clients that they care. That’s an important message at any time, but means even more when you’re at your most vulnerable.
Travelling to a different location each evening gives our clients a chance to see how many people care about them. As a former client once said, “What better way to go through a great trial than in the house of God!”
The flip side of this relationship is that our volunteers come to know homeless people as individuals; they are able to put faces to the issue of homelessness, making it more real, more personal. Our volunteer collaborators are fighting homelessness, but they do it one person at a time.
We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world. ~ Woodrow Wilson
Room at the Inn Night Sites
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