By Jessica Micallef
The Sunbury Winter Night Shelter has warmed the hearts of the community.
The three-month initiative provided sleeping places in local churches for homeless people during the cold months of June, July and August.
Project co-ordinator Chris Morgan-Prosser said the service was a success.
“It brought an awareness of homelessness in our very own community which was most important,” she said.
“Our community supported the winter night shelter. The volunteers were just amazing, they did the evening shift, the overnight shifts, breakfast for the guests, they cooked meals, they washed their bed linen. They just did an amazing amount of everything.”
The shelter provided a place to sleep for 19 guests across five different Sunbury churches. More than 380 beds and dinners were made and about 160 volunteers dedicated their time to the project.
“Although there were only five churches that actually looked after the guests, some of the volunteers on the nights came from other churches,” Ms Morgan-Prosser said.
“It was absolutely a church and community joint effort. There was no one left out.
“The guests took a chance because they would have normally been outside. We didn’t know them and they didn’t know us, so I think we should be grateful that the guests came. I don’t think that the community let them down.”
Ms Morgan-Prosser said the initiative was locked in for next year’s winter. However, she said she would like to extend the service to more than just a night-time shelter.
“The most difficult thing was saying to them in the morning ‘have a good day, there’s a drop-in centre that runs for a few hours,’” she said. “It would be really good if we could have some sort of day-time support centre. That is my pie in the sky dream.”
