3. WCA Giving Tree

The Women and Children's Alliance mission is "Safety, healing and freedom from domestic abuse and sexual assault." They opened in 1910  to provide safe housing for women in Boise. In the last for 40 years, they have narrowed their focus to helping individuals that are impacted by domestic violence and/or sexual assault. They do this by providing no-cost shelter and supportive services. As a survivor of sexual assault, I understand the need for getting help to get onto that path to healing. Lord knows I am still on that journey myself.

The WCA Giving Tree Program partners with the Downtown Boise Association. The city Christmas tree that is in the Boise Center (where the fountain is) gets lit on the day after Thanksgiving. There are choirs that sing, dancers that perform, and the mayor gives a speech. Everyone lights a candle, Santa shows up, and the Christmas tree gets lit. This year it was lit by a refugee from Afghanistan and a veteran who served in Afghanistan. It was beautiful! The WCA has tags placed around the tree that people can take and the tag has an item on it that someone who utilizes the WCA needs. I enlisted my little helpers for this one!

 

If you are someone you know is struggling with domestic or sexual abuse, here are some numbers:  24-hour Domestic Abuse Hotline 208-343-7025 and the 24-hour Sexual Assault Hotline 208-345-7273 (RAPE)

2. Christmas Food Boxes

 

The Cathedral of the Rockies (I promise, not all of these are going to involve church) does the Christmas Food Boxes every year. The Boise School District partners with the Cathedral to help some families that may be struggling. These families are identified by teachers, school counselors, and school social workers. The day I went to go pick out a family and a box to fill with groceries, they had it all nicely laid out by zip code. I'm sure they do this for people who want to help someone in their neighborhood or maybe don't have the best transportation to travel far. I chose a family of four that has a child in the Frank Church High School because that is the area's alternative high school (I sadly turned down an internship there this year), so I imagine that there is some added stress and stigma involved.

The process was easy. I called the number for the family and verified address, number of household members, and inquired about any food allergies. I was going to involve my girls in this process and have them help pick out and deliver the groceries, but I've been feeling overwhelmed by my to do list. My therapist told me that it is okay to not involve my girls in this process because I involve them in so many other aspects of generosity, and that I should order the groceries through an app and pick them up so it was less stress. It was genius!

Below is the list of food given to us as a starting point in creating the Christmas Food Box. I love that they take cultural considerations into dietary restrictions. So progressive!

Below is the letter from the pastor that we included in the Christmas Food Box. I'll be honest, I don't like churches that give out things with the caveat of joining a service. I think that is sneaky and takes away a person's right to self-determination. Because of this, I was skeptical of the letter we were to include. However, it just invites them to join if they wish so I was okay with that. When I was working with families experiencing homelessness in the past, we had a few churches in that area that would offer a free, hot meal...IF they sat through a service or talked to a pastor. That really rubs me the wrong way. We shouldn't be forcing religion on people. Faith is deeply personal to everyone. The whole point is to do these acts of service with nothing in return--just out of the goodness of your heart. P.S. I love that Pastor Duane lists his pronouns! Again, so progressive and if you are wondering why that matters, it shows allyship with those whose pronouns get misinterpreted by the general public. It's important!

To respect the family's right to privacy, I will not be sharing anymore about them other than to say they were appreciative. Some acts of kindness can be hours of volunteering and some can be spending a little bit of money. This was a mix of the two. If you don't have a lot of time but you have some extra cash, there are ways to put those dollars to good use. If you don't have any money to give but you have a bit of extra time, there are places that would love to put you to work. If you can't do either, I get it. I see you. The biggest act of kindness anyone can do, is to make eye contact with people and smile. SEE them.

1. Sunday Friendship Feast

 

In true annoying blog form, I'm going to give some background into choosing the Sunday Friendship Feast as my first volunteer activity for Forty by 40. 2020 uprooted everything for pretty much everyone. For me, it made me realize that I needed to serve out a greater purpose with my life. When I saw the injustices happening with the BIPOC community, individuals experiencing homelessness, people protesting with weapons outside the mayor's house...these things changed me. I lost faith in my faith community when they weren't leading the charge on a lot of these injustices. And when I found out that the church I loved had a vastly different view on LGBTQIA+ rights and their roles within our faith communities, I knew my family and I needed to step away. All of this prompted my need to step up and to do something. I Googled "social justice jobs and degrees" and social work came up and it turned out that we had a pretty great social work program here in Boise.

My first internship was with the McKinney Vento Program at Nampa School District where I worked with families experiencing homelessness and let me tell you, this is WAY more common than you think. This validated my belief that unhoused individuals are "othered" by our society for the most part and people don't take the time to hear their stories and see their humanity--which I believe goes directly against the teaching of Jesus. I'm sure most of you know that I grew up in the evangelical Christian world and even got my undergrad degree (including a minor in Biblical Studies) at Trinity Bible College. While I turned into Matthew 25 and take very seriously "what you do to the least of these you do to Me", it turned me into a progressive Christian. I started loving and paying attention to people whose lived experiences were different than mine and I started to speak out about their injustices. Somehow, this made a lot of people who have always been close to me think I was turning away from my faith when in fact, it is that "What Would Jesus Do?" mentality from the 90s that has led and continues to drive this path that I am on to social justice.

The Cathedral of the Rockies is a United Methodist church that is down the road from my house. In 2020, I started paying attention to them because they had banners with sayings that were justice-focused such as "Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly." which is Micah 6:8 and the inspiration for my lady justice tattoo. These exact words will be added to the tattoo at some point. The church also had banners that showed their support for the LGBTQIA+ community (in fact, they fly a pride flag 24/7), showed support for women's right to choose after the overturning of Roe, and their support for Interfaith Sanctuary.

For those of you that don't know, Interfaith Sanctuary has been a hot button issue in the Boise area. It is a homeless shelter that outgrew their downtown location and sold their building a bit early without having another place secured. When they found a new location in the old Salvation Army building on State Street,   the surrounding neighborhoods hated the idea and have done everything to stop Interfaith Sanctuary from opening there. No matter where you stand on the issue, here are some facts: saying that a shelter in your neighborhood plummets home values is effectively "othering" individuals who need these services and saying "I'm moving" shows your privilege. Thinking that only individuals that utilize homeless shelters are creepy, single men that only drink and do drugs is effectively "othering" these individuals and that is statistically not true of the people who use these shelters (I see you, commenters on NextDoor). I saw this firsthand when working with families experiencing homelessness. If the statements I just made make you feel a certain way, then I urge you to reach out to me and volunteer with me at this shelter in the future. You CANNOT know what people's experiences are without spending time with them. Okay, back to Cathedral of the Rockies...

I recently decided to start going back to church and my choice was with the Cathedral. While the music isn't what I'm used to coming from the evangelical world, I love their message. I love that they have gay people on the worship team and teaching Sunday school. I love that after one of the many mass shootings that have happened recently, they talked about it in church and the pastor wore orange (a symbol for better gun safety laws). I went to a Coffee with the Pastor and asked him a lot of hard questions that most Christians shy away from. I love that he said I am just as likely to find members of the church protesting at the Capital as I am to see them in church on Sundays. He welcomed my questions and encourages Christians to have the hard conversations because that's how we learn from one another and deepen our love for people. I wanted to know what they were doing to help the issue of homelessness in our city and this is how I found out about Sunday Friendship Feast.

Every Sunday and every third Thursday, they make a hot meal for anyone to enjoy and during the week, they serve sack lunches to anyone who comes by wanting one. On November 27th, I signed up to be a part of their prep team. I got the chance to speak with Pete Schroeder who is the director of these food programs. He explained how he got involved with this work and how he is the church's representative on several housing committees. He made mention of the fact that he is shocked that he is the only church representative that goes to these meetings because the church should be more invested in issues like affordable housing and helping those experiencing homelessness (I agree). He explained that it is not just people experiencing homelessness that come by for meals from the church. During the weekdays, they get a number of Boise High School students who come get sack lunches and that a lot of them take the time to chat with some unhoused individuals. I'm telling you, there are a lot of people afraid of what the world is going to be like with our youth, and I've got to admit that I'm encourage by so many things I see them doing. I believe they are instilled with more compassion and empathy than my generation was. When I asked Pete what the struggles with running a food program like this was, he said that it is ran by volunteers and that most of the people who take the time to volunteer are elderly, retired folks, he has seen a dramatic decrease in volunteers since the Covid pandemic because of this population being higher risk. While he had hoped that the numbers would be back to normal by now, that just isn't the case. Pete showed me the gymnasium where they used to serve the meals indoors and allow the people a break from the outdoor elements, but because of the dwindling volunteer numbers and the fact that they have to hire a security guard for indoor events of that size that costs over $150, it just can't happen right now.

So how did my actual volunteering go? Great! I met a few retired couples (one of which was a social worker who wants to meet with me about policy work). They showed me the ropes and kept me busy. Since it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, they had been given ham and a lot of other Thanksgiving-ish sides. My job was dishing out various sides into the to-go containers. We made 80 meals that day. When people started showing up to receive food, Pete took me outside to see the impact this work makes. There even happened to be a gentleman playing his guitar who was currently staying in a halfway house while he got his life back on track (his words). There was a 90 year old man who comes down just to chat with people. It was really amazing to see.

I guess my parting thoughts from this first volunteer activity is that, if you are able, volunteer somewhere. Find the things you are super passionate about and do some research into opportunities to volunteer in that field. If you don't know where to start, please reach out to me and I would be more than happy to connect you to some resources. According to Pete, volunteers are needed now more than ever.

***Disclaimer. All information and opinions above are from me and I am NOT representing any of the organizations mentioned. While I am doing my best not to turn these blog posts into research papers, I can send more information backing up some of these claims if you are interested.

Happy Birthday to Me

I LOVE birthdays! Especially milestone birthdays. Today I turn 39 which means that next year I'm Over the Hill? Whatever! I think life just keeps getting better the older (and wiser) I get. Ten years ago, I started my Thirty by 30 project where I blogged about 30 good deeds/volunteer moments that I participated in before I turned the big 3-0. I'm bringing it back, baby! Forty by 40 is here and I'm really excited about it. I'm in a very different place in my life than I was 10 years ago and being a social work graduate student, my eyes are open to the truly incredible volunteer opportunities here in Idaho. Last time I was living in Nashville, Tennessee where they had the amazing website Hands On Nashville that made finding volunteer opportunities a breeze. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring something like this to the Treasure Valley, but until then, I have to find my volunteer opportunities the old fashioned way--word of mouth and looking at non-profits' websites. If you are reading this and you know of any organizations that can use an extra volunteer, let me know! I'm open to ideas.

I'm doing this for educational purposes--yours and mine. If I have learned anything in my life it is that you cannot comprehend other peoples' lived experiences unless you listen to them. Volunteering makes us more compassionate human beings and I know that there are a lot of people out there who would love to find ways to help out, but don't know where to start. I urge you that, if any of the things I write about interest you, please reach out to me, the organization, or whatever to learn more.