Warming Station Update

This article summarizes the discussion Chelsea led on July 16, introducing the City’s Warming Station initiative to St. John’s. The meeting was well attended, and the initiative was received enthusiastically.

As the summer temperatures continue to rise, it might be difficult to switch gears and think about the coming winter weather, but for our unsheltered neighbors, winter weather brings additional hardships. This winter, the City of Charleston has allocated funds to expand its warming center operations for our most vulnerable community members!

At this time, the city, does not have a permanent location for these vital services, so this winter will be a transitional year.

Our aim is to have various churches physically host a warming center while additional churches, including St. John’s, host with volunteers. The services offered would be reduced slightly for a more sustainable model, that is, we would always offer a place to sleep, use the bathroom, and food and warm drinks for anyone who comes. The location and hosts would rotate, most likely on a weekly basis.

For example, if Kanawha United Presbyterian (KUPC) hosted physically and volunteer-staffed the first week of the month, they could physically host the second week of the month and St. John’s volunteers would be on-call to man the center that week when the temperature dropped below a certain threshold.

Say the temperature was forecast to drop to 10 degrees on Monday and Wednesday. The 3-4 volunteers signed up to be on-call Monday and Wednesday from St. John’s would then show up to KUPC and help man the warming station those nights.

If you are interested in learning more about this effort to help our unsheltered neighbors, or those who are otherwise without heat on the coldest nights of the winter, please reach out to Chelsea Steelhammer, chelseasteelhammer@gmail.com, and come to the training session on Sunday, August 6 at noon with Margaret O’Neil of the United Way. Please join us!