13 Jul A Transformation for IHS Families
Living in a homeless shelter is no holiday. While it’s a vast improvement over life on the street exposed to the elements and the dangers of traffic, drugs, and crime, sharing one large room with 30 families poses a lot of challenges. There’s very little privacy. The lights go off at 9 pm and come on again at 5:30 am. You have to shower and eat on someone else’s schedule. Emergency shelter is a blessing, but it’s not an easy life.
At IHS, we make every effort to provide a safe, clean, comfortable living environment for our guests while they are putting in the hard work to transition to their own permanent housing. That’s why we were so thrilled to be able to renovate our family dorm last month. With the help of our hard working staff and volunteers and a grant from Alexander and Baldwin, we were able to transform our family dorm into a bright, airy, living quarters that’s more comfortable for everyone.
Over the course of three days, our team worked hard to remove all of our old furniture, deep clean, get rid of bugs, paint the walls, wax the floors, and then replace the furniture with new clean bed frames and storage units for each family. It feels like a completely different space.
We’re planning to give a similar treatment to our single women’s dorm on December 16th and 17th. If you’d like to volunteer to be a part of this remarkable transformation and you’re willing to put in a day of hard, dirty work, we’d love to have you join us. The impact it has on the lives of those women and families who temporarily call IHS home is profound. Contact volunteer@ihs-hawaii.org for more details.
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