Thank you for Having A Heart, Lincoln Park!

During the month of February, if you had walked down the stretch of Clark Street between Webster and Diversy, you might have noticed bright yellow and pink flyers in the windows of many of the businesses advertising the Have A Heart drive.  If you looked closer, you would have noticed that the Have A Heart drive was for the Lincoln Park Community Shelter.  For the second year, LPCS partnered with merchants along Clark Street to host boxes to collect cereal, coffee, oatmeal, and other non-perishable breakfast items.

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you might be thinking to yourself, "I thought volunteers made breakfast at LPCS," and you would be correct--on some mornings they do.  The opportunity to make breakfast at LPCS is fairly new, so there aren't volunteer groups scheduled every morning, which is where the food drive comes in.  On the mornings that there is no breakfast group, LPCS provides cereal, coffee, oatmeal, and other breakfast items.

The idea for the breakfast food drive stemmed not only from our need for donations, but also from the idea of giving back to the community that has supported us so well for the last 27 years.  Being a community based organization that was founded by a group of concerned neighbors, LPCS likes to give back when it can, in the ways it can.  One of these ways is by encouraging people to shop locally since it has been shown to help with economic sustainability. 

Thank you to all of the individuals who donated to the drive.  While we didn't collect as much as we had hoped, we are grateful for everything that we did collect.  Thank you to Abeille Beauty, AKIRA, BankFinancial, Cycle Smithy, Floyd's Barbershop, Frankie's on the Park, Holtzmann's, Lincoln Park Market, Nest Furniture, New Balance Chicago, Panache, See Eyewear, Siena by Maria, and Spex for participating in this year's drive.  A special thank you to Big Apple Finer Foods who made the generous offer to donate any additional needed items after the drive was over.

We look forward to partnering with the community for the Third Annual Have A Heart drive again next year!

More than just Biscuits & Gravy

"Voices of the Lincoln Park Community Shelter" is a place where staff, guests, grads, volunteers, and community members can share their thoughts about homelessness, LPCS, and its programs through blog posts.  This week, the following post was written by one of our wonderful volunteers after making breakfast last week. 

I’ve been helping prepare a monthly hot breakfast at LPCS for a little over a year now.  Our group is made up of members and staff of the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce.  It is always an enjoyable experience between the camaraderie of my Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce cohorts and visiting with the guests over breakfast. Today was especially rewarding--one of the guests that I have gotten to know fairly well over the last year told me she is moving out of LPCS!  We shared a hug and some happy tears.

After a delicious breakfast of Biscuits & Gravy, scrambled eggs, fruit salad, veggie salad, caramelized bacon (heavenly), and sausages, the clean up began. We had decorated for Valentines Day, and I noticed one of the guests removing the decorated tablecloths and folding them up.  When I asked her what she was going to do with them, she told me that she was going to take them to LPCS' Community Engagement Program where she volunteers her time on Saturday mornings.  The Community Engagement Program, or CEP, is where individuals who are currently homeless or tenuously housed can come for a meal, hot shower and laundry facilities. The guest who was saving the tablecloths wanted to make things special for the CEP participants for Valentine’s Day.  In addition to recycling the tablecloths, she also took some of the extra decorations to make Saturday's CEP a bit more festive. Talk about Pay It Forward!

I always leave LPCS with a wonderful, warm feeling. Today those feelings were boiling over.

--Elizabeth Rossdeutscher, LPCS Board Member

New Experiences

We love it when volunteers share their experiences of volunteering at LPCS.  We recently received an article written about a Wisconsin youth group's trip to Chicago and wanted to share it with you.  Enjoy!

If you walked into the Lincoln Park Community Shelter in Chicago, IL on July 31, you would have seen 15 people from Menomonie's First Congregational United Church of Christ.  Kids and adults alike would be found playing games, preparing a supper, and laughing with the guests in the homeless shelter. 

The group of 6 adults and 9 youth left on Friday, July 29, for a long, long drive down to the Windy City.  Upon arriving, the group stayed at St. Pauls United Church of Christ in the Lincoln Park area.  Three teams prepared tow breakfasts, two dinners, and three bunches of sack lunches over the course of three days.  The preparation entailed planning, shoppiung for, cooking, and plating and serving each meal.

This was the first mission trip for many of the youth, and it really showed them that not everybody has a place to come home to every night.  The Lincoln Park Community Shelter is a facility in the Lincoln Park neighborhood that provides housing and meals for 35 homeless people.  Because it's privately funded, the guests, as they are called, can stay as long as they need to.  Some of the men and women staying at the shelter have jobs or are going to school and are making the transition into permanent housing, which is the goal of the program.  When they leave, a spot opens up and a new person comes into the shelter.  Alumni of LPCS (Graduates) often volunteer once they have left, creating a cycle of good-deed doing. 

The experience was a new one for the youth.  "It really made me realize that people on the street sometimes have good skills and just need some help to get into a shelter and have a better life," saus Sean Williams who went on the trip with his father Todd and his younger brother Max.  Rachel Ropella says, "Going to Chicago truly opened my eyes about how I see poverty and how much of a difference serving them with a smile makes."

Fifteen adults and youth returned Tuesday, August 2, with a new way pf perceiving the world.  Everyone had a great time, as is evidenced by their blog: uccchicagomissiontrip.blogspot.com.  For more information about the trip, contact First Congregational UCC at 715-235-5838.

--Emily Billingsley, First Congregational UCC

Make Breakfast at LPCS

Are you a morning person? Do you like to cook? LPCS has recently decided to offer a hot breakfast to our guests every morning. If you are interested in volunteering to make breakfast let us know! Volunteers purchase, prepare, and serve the food. In the past, volunteers have made everything from oatmeal and bagels to pancakes and egg bakes. Weekday breakfast is served at 7:30 a.m. and weekend breakfast is served at 9:30am. To find out more information, and to see what dates are avaiable, please visit http://www.lpcsonline.org/volunteer-calendars. To sign up, please email Suzanne at lpcsinfo@lpcsonline.org!