Institute for Ethical and Civic Engagement

CU community gives back during the holidays

Winter months less jolly for the homeless

December 11, 2008

It can be easy to get caught up in the excited frenzy of the holidays, but this year some CU students and Boulder community members are making sure that those less fortunate don't get lost in the shuffle.

"The holidays really bring out the giving aspect of people," said Gina Barajas, volunteer coordinator for the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless.

Barajas said the winter months can be understandably difficult for the homeless due to the sometimes severe weather conditions, lack of food and loneliness that comes with the holidays. The shelter can only provide food and shelter for 160 people a night, but they never turn anyone down without offering them at least a to-go meal, she said.

Though there are other shelters in Boulder County, Barajas said, they are only day shelters. Boulder shelter's 160 beds comprise the only overnight refuge in Boulder County for the homeless.

The shelter has approximately 900 regular volunteers a year, she said. The numbers of volunteer requests go up during the holidays, but she said that because of the structured nature of the program, most of the sporadic requests don't get granted.

People who wish to help can donate items listed on the wish list to the shelter before noon or after 4 p.m.. The shelter is closed and unstaffed between those hours, she explained.

Adam Bowen, an 18-year-old freshman architecture major, volunteers at the shelter in part, he said, because of the empathy he feels for the homeless suffering through the rough winter months often without adequate food, shelter or companionship.

"The shelter needs way more people during the winter, they need more food, they need more everything," Bowen said.

But Bowen isn't solely volunteering because he feels for the people he sometimes helps to feed and make feel welcome. He's enrolled in Dr. Veronica House's required freshman writing and rhetoric class.

Bowen explained that all freshmen architecture majors are required to take a writing and rhetoric class, so he signed up for one which fit his schedule. Once he arrived, he was surprised to learn that he would be required to complete 15 hours of community service as a requirement of the class. In addition, all the writing assignments and projects completed in the class would relate to the service project he selected.

House explained that she has been incorporating community service with her classes since she was a graduate student nine years ago, but that she recently received a grant from the university's Institute for Ethical and Civil Engagement to fund the training of other teachers so that they too can implement the service learning program. She said that John Ackerman and the Office for Service Learning were also instrumental in helping her to receive this grant.

"We really want to model community engagement to the university, to motivate them to get involved in the community," House said.

Though there is only one instructor participating in a service-oriented freshman writing class this semester, next semester there will be six teachers incorporating service learning into their curriculum.

House said the program targets freshmen because she sees so much potential in them and thinks that the valuable experience of community service will help them to get a better grasp on what they might like to major in or do with their lives.

"Our goal is really to make them excited about writing, make them see that it matters in a real world environment, and that they can affect change," she said. "We want to show them that their education is more than a paper they throw away at the end of the semester."

Bowen, for one, said he thinks the program is a good opportunity to get students involved in the community. He also said that through various research papers he completed over the semester, he now has a better understanding of the causes of homelessness, such as lack of affordable housing and the destruction of existing low-income housing to make room for the construction of luxurious housing complexes.

Bowen said that he will continue to volunteer after this semester, though probably not as much as he did during it. But he said he was glad that he was around to help out this holiday season.

"During the holidays everyone wants to give back, and everyone wants to know they're wanted and worth being given to," Bowen said.

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