Hospitality house is a non-profit crisis intervention agency. It provides food, shelter, and support to families and individuals who face problems such as homelessness and poverty. They serve up to seven counties, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey. During my first couple of days here, I got to understand more about Hospitality House from Jordan Duke’s help, the facilities manager of hospitality house. He took me on a tour and explained what Hospitality House was all about and what they do for the community. The main part of the facility that I found to be very important was the kitchen area. The kitchen provides three meals daily for anyone who comes in, no questions asked. There is also a pantry that visitors are able to use and can take a box of items from the pantry home with them. A “Cooking Matters” class takes place, where they teach people how to cook a meal under a certain amount of money. Since they are a non-profit organization, donations are more than welcome and shelter for people who are in need is always provided. Hospitality House also has a separate location for their emergency shelter that is on a weekly basis. It has two male dorms and two female dorms which can hold up to twenty-four residents and eight overflow beds. In addition to this program, they do transitional housing which is on a monthly basis and can hold up to twenty-nine residents, this includes the family rooms. Hospitality House takes pride in family housing and find that it is very important to keep the families together and help them move forward in finding a place to live on their own. Jordan continued to walk me around and informed me with further programs for their residents. For example, a computer room is set up so the people who are staying there can have access to job applications and other important things that require the internet. Health professionals are also on site for counseling, health checks, drug tests, etc. Programs to help people set up finances and manage savings in order to find a place to live and find jobs is also available.
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In conclusion to absorbing all this information about this organization within the first couple of days, I was able to truly know Hospitality House’s mission; and through that, I was thoroughly satisfied. Starting off as a front desk volunteer, I was able to interact with people and notice who was the most reoccurring residents and who rarely came in for assistance. …show more content…
Asking for their names and aiding them with simple tasks that I could achieve from the front desk was a great way for me to slowly get to know these wonderful people. Asking residents, “How are you doing today?” or even the staff, “How can I help?” allowed me to get more involved within the system. One thing I did notice about my first gut reaction was that if I would walk by someone who looked dirty, I continuously found myself holding my breath, rather than walking towards my discomfort. Little things like this were happening to me and I did not like myself for it, so I decided to change my attitude.
I did not discuss this with anyone, but I wanted to focused more on working on it alone to gain more self-control. Soon after doing a lot of self evaluating at the front desk, Sam Barr, my advisor suggested that I go to the kid’s room and hangout with them while their parents were in private meetings. One of my goals was to get more involved with children and really learn if this is something that I can do in my future, so this is when I physically pulled myself out of my comfort zone. I don’t seem to do well with children, but I was able to hold revealing and humorous conversations with a few of them. The kids told me that their parents were residents of the Hospitality House, and I was able to learn where they went to school and where their emotional state was during this time in their lives. At first I was a bit awkward, I was not comfortable with long periods of silences; even though the kids did not seem to mind it. I also found it challenging to come up with open ended questions. My mouth would go before I
In conclusion to absorbing all this information about this organization within the first couple of days, I was able to truly know Hospitality House’s mission; and through that, I was thoroughly satisfied. Starting off as a front desk volunteer, I was able to interact with people and notice who was the most reoccurring residents and who rarely came in for assistance. …show more content…
Asking for their names and aiding them with simple tasks that I could achieve from the front desk was a great way for me to slowly get to know these wonderful people. Asking residents, “How are you doing today?” or even the staff, “How can I help?” allowed me to get more involved within the system. One thing I did notice about my first gut reaction was that if I would walk by someone who looked dirty, I continuously found myself holding my breath, rather than walking towards my discomfort. Little things like this were happening to me and I did not like myself for it, so I decided to change my attitude.
I did not discuss this with anyone, but I wanted to focused more on working on it alone to gain more self-control. Soon after doing a lot of self evaluating at the front desk, Sam Barr, my advisor suggested that I go to the kid’s room and hangout with them while their parents were in private meetings. One of my goals was to get more involved with children and really learn if this is something that I can do in my future, so this is when I physically pulled myself out of my comfort zone. I don’t seem to do well with children, but I was able to hold revealing and humorous conversations with a few of them. The kids told me that their parents were residents of the Hospitality House, and I was able to learn where they went to school and where their emotional state was during this time in their lives. At first I was a bit awkward, I was not comfortable with long periods of silences; even though the kids did not seem to mind it. I also found it challenging to come up with open ended questions. My mouth would go before I