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I’m Bethany Harmon and I am a student in the Human Development and Family Science program
along with Terese Jones and Joy Lile. We, together with another student, Cara Ashworth
in Public Health wrote some grants for a local cold weather women’s shelter in Corvallis.
What we had to do for the grant was essentially compile a list of possible grants that could
fit the requirements of this cold weather women’s shelter in the Corvallis area. We
researched them, we divided them up by the deadlines and started working on them.
They managed to get $15,500 from two grants that they wrote, and that has made such a
wonderful, such a huge difference for us. We had enough money definitely to get through
November and December and maybe part of January but it was kind of iffy so we were going to
have to focus a lot on fundraising even as we were just trying to get going with the
shelter. So it’s just been such a blessing. And I was really happy for them because they
were so successful in the grant writing and they really have a lot to be proud of, they
did a great job.
After a couple of years of classes we wanted to apply the skills that we had learned to
a practical problem in the community. The opportunity for this shelter came up and being
able to have a cold weather women’s shelter really meets a very basic public health need
in terms of keeping women healthy and giving them the ability to feel safe.
This is the first year that we’ve had the shelter here, there’s been a shelter in
the past at a couple of other locations in town. They were not the most accessible places
for the women to get to and so we decided somebody needed to do something about it,
and that somebody was us.
Both of these grants will be primarily used for staffing needs. Many of the goods that
the shelter needed were donated or purchased by church or other local organizations such
as the beds, the mattresses.
The Rome and the Inn, which is the cold weather women’s shelter, we provide beds, a safe,
warm place for women to stay during the winter months. We provide a bed for them, we provide
a healthy snack in the evening and usually something in the morning and usually showers
three times a week. But there is clearly a great need, so this is the only place for
women to get out of the cold and so far it’s definitely paid out. We have had more women
I think on average so far on average days compared to the other shelters that were really
hard to get to.
Seeing the shelter in action was great. We were able to see some of the really basic
needs such as showering and laundry and a warm place to sleep and some really basic
snacks were being provided for these women, and some of them mentioned that they would
have not had somewhere else to go that night.
Well one night when I came in at 6 or so and it was minus 4 on my way into town. So, it’s
been very cold, and I know that we have literally saved lives in this last week, they would
have frozen to death if they were out there on the streets.
As students we were attracted to this project because we are very interested in community-level
organization and how communities are able to pull members together to meet their own
needs, and this experience has really showed us that that’s possible.
It really takes a lot of people to make this happen, it’s an incredible number of volunteer
hours and individual volunteers to make these women safe. One person cannot do this, one
church cannot do this. It’s a community effort and it’s been great to see how that’s
worked out.
We were excited this summer to be able to apply the skills that we’ve gained from
our graduate education so far in a way that impacts the community in an immediate and
positive way. In such a way that’s as basic as providing shelter.
The students and all of the volunteers have just been talking with the women, listening
to their stories, sharing some laughs, watching movies together. It’s just really wonderful
and I think one of the best things about the shelter is that it helps people in the larger
community to realize that these people are not the homeless, they are individual women
who have their own stories and their own needs and their own reasons for being where they
are. And it teaches us all to have a little bit more compassion for them and to understand
what happens, why people end up homeless and so I think it’s been very valuable to everybody
involved just to make those human to human contacts with neighbors that they never knew
that they would know.