Posts Tagged ‘homeless’

Tonight wasn’t the best night we’ve ever had at the Humanist Action Group. We judge that by the amount of people we find – on a good night, everyone will have found shelter and there will be nobody on the streets. Tonight, we got about 100m from our door before we had run out of coffee and had to go back to make more.

One of the people we chatted to gave us an insight into how much money you can make begging. It’s significantly less than you can earn in a minimum wage job. If anyone ever tells you they make loads of money – tell them to stop voting Tory and pull their head out of their ass.

Here is what you might expect to make in a week…

• Monday – Wednesday: £10-15 per night
• Thursday: £20 per night
• Friday: £25-30 per night
• Saturday: If the weather is good, maybe £35
• Sunday: Nothing, there is nobody in town on a Sunday

Not a great way to scratch a living.

Do you have any old gloves lying around in the back of your cupboard? If so, we would really appreciate it if you would be willing to donate them to the Humanist Action Group. Here’s why…

Earlier this evening, we were out on a HAG homeless run. Discussing it beforehand, myself and Katie agreed that given how bitterly cold it was outside, we hoped we wouldn’t find anyone at all out on the streets tonight.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. Dead wrong. We found loads of people. We found so many people that we first ran out of food and had to go fetch some more, then we ran out of coffee and had to go back and brew another batch up!

By this point we had been out for hours and we were metaphorically frozen to the bone. So I can only imagine how those who had been out there all night felt.

In fact, you didn’t even need to imagine – you could see their hand physically shaking as you handed them something.

No wonder, given many of them didn’t even have gloves. This isn’t the first time we have come across this problem – I’ve seen it a few times before. Yet, it seems a problem we can easily solve.

I mean, so many of us have two many pairs of gloves. Given that one is all you really need. Maybe two at a stretch – I have my touch screen compatible gloves and my “it’s really, really cold” gloves. But why do I have a third pair? There is no reason; I just never threw them out.

There must be more than me in this situation. A pair of old but otherwise perfectly in tact pair of gloves sitting at the back of the cupboard that you don’t wear any more. If so, we would love it if you would be willing to donate them, so that we can hand them out during HAG homeless work!

So, if you get chance, please check the backs of your cupboards. It won’t cost you anything and makes a world of difference to people who are out in the bitter winter’s night. Any donations will be gladly collected by Katie, myself or any of the CWF trustees. You can even post them to us – and if you want, we’ll even refund the postage to you. Get in touch for more details.

Thanks for your support!

Chris

Last Monday saw the end of the 2011 Holiday Food Drive. We packed all the donations into boxes, used the money donated to buy even more, and delivered it all to a local homeless shelter. Thanks to everyone who made a donation or helped out on the day!

We’re pleased to announce that today we are launching the first in what will be a series of guides by the Humanist Action Group. HAG does great work in Leeds and if you have ever thought about running such a group in your local community, these guides are for you.

The guides have been under development for a while and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed to them.

The first guide we are making available is the organiser’s guide which explains the basics of organising a group, finding and recruiting volunteers, staying on top of everything and making sure you have the correct paperwork in place.

The second guide we are launching today is the homeless guide which explains how to run a simple feed the homeless programme. If you would like to get a copy of these, just get in touch!

We have further guides under development also, to keep an eye out for those.

On Monday, the Humanist Action Group of Leeds completed it’s holiday food drive. Having spent the previous two weeks collecting food and donations to put together food parcels for local homeless shelters, the group spend the night bringing together all the food and packaging it up.

In total the group managed 24 boxes, most of which had to be duct taped shut due to them overflowing. The lesson for next time – we need bigger boxes!

Having just sent this message out to everyone in the Humanist Action Group, I thought it was probably worthwhile posting here too…

As you may have seen from the invites that Katie sent out, we’re doing a food drive to put together food parcels for people living in shelters this holiday season – you can find more details on the Facebook event.

There are a number of ways you can get involved…

1. Donating food. We need non-perishable stuff like tinned food, chocolate bars, etc. It costs very little to throw an extra few tins of baked beans or cans of fish in your trolley and Katie has even volunteered to come collect it from you!
    
2. Donating time. We need people to come down on Monday to help make up the parcels and deliver them. One evening for weeks, if not months of feeling good about yourself ;).
    
3. Donating cash. If you don’t have time to do any of the above, then consider making a one time donation – we’ll be doing a Marko run to buy as much food as we can for the parcels, so the more money we have, the more we can buy! You can find our bank details and donation links on the charity’s website.

Thanks for your support!

Chris

On Thursday we ran a special session of our homeless outreach work specifically designed to introduce new people. Turn out was great and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came down and gave up their evening to help out.

Yesterday’s homeless action saw the best attendance for a Humanist Action Group of Leeds event in the history of the group.

As you’ll probably be aware the weather in the UK has been rather cold over the past month with several heavy snowfalls and as a result the group has made a special effort to make sure volunteers were on hand when needed.

Luckily everyone living on the city centre’s streets managed to make it into a shelter during the snowfall – it’s actually a really good feeling when you go out in the snow and find nobody because it means chances are they are somewhere warmer. Now people are back on the streets however we really need people to continue to sign up and volunteer their time.

If you are interested in volunteering you can register your details on the website or find out more about the group on their Facebook page.

Here at HAGs we’re making a real push at the moment to premote HAGs and get people volunteering.

It’s absolutely freezing here in Leeds at the moment and it’s often we at the moment as well so if there was any time of year that you don’t want to be stuck out on the streets, it’s probably about now.

As such we really need volunteers to make sure we’re going out as much as possible so if you can spare some time, do get in touch. We’re also working on how we can roll similar schemes out to other cities around the UK, and indeed the world, so if you’re interested let us know.

Thursday saw HAG head out with some new volunteers in the form of Sophie and Jon. Turns out, we’ve solved the problem again though.

What we need to work on now is exporting HAG to various other cities around the UK, after all as it stands we have a higher success rate than Narconon ;).