A helping hand is being sought by Hillcrest Transitional Housing.
Shannen White is the Director of Hillcrest and said the agency is looking for volunteers to do some handy work.
“We have a huge need right now with people that are just handy and want to do some hands-on volunteering down at the apartments,” White said. “All of our apartments are completely renovated and ready for families and we just have some little maintenance issues in some of them that we need to address and so the need for volunteers right now is vital. Even if you don’t have a lot of maintenance skills this is stuff that can be taught very easily.”
White said the work covers a wide-range of to-do’s
“We have a need for changing furnace filters, for changing out the batteries in the smoke alarms, installing handrails in the bathrooms just some very minor stuff that we need to get done,” White said.
Hillcrest Transitional Housing is a 90 day program that helps transition people out of homelessness.
“We help transition those suffering from severe poverty and homelessness into a state of self-sufficiency which means completely self-sufficient and off of government assistance, working full-time and being a productive citizen of St. Joseph, Missouri,” White said.
Currently, Hillcrest has 21 units, 19 of those units are used for families. White said just in 2015 the organization made a big difference.
“We graduated 22 adults and 33 children from homelessness to self-sufficiency, so the huge impacts that that has on our community of taking families out of poverty and into a position where they’re working full-time, shopping locally and giving back to our community is huge,” White said “Not only that but we’re also decreasing generation poverty where we can actually say we’re breaking that cycle and helping children in the long-term.”
White said she hopes to get a pool of people who can help with maintenance issues by the end of January.
“Just so that we can be at full capacity and be utilizing every single apartment by the end of this month. It’s been a goal of mine personally to get every apartment up and running so we can help more families become self-sufficient,” she said.
If someone wants to volunteer White said to give her a call at Hillcrest at (816) 351-5774.