By Avram Sacks, The Joy of Volunteering

Winter is here, and life on the streets becomes all the more challenging. If you have ever wanted to help out, but didn’t know how, there are several different opportunities available.

Ashland Winter Shelter

A winter shelter will open on January 1st at 2200 Ashland St. The shelter will open every day at 7 pm and close every morning at 9 a.m. The Shelter will be staffed by paid employees who work for Rogue Retreat. Volunteers are needed to support the paid staff to serve meals, assist the guests, and help with clean-up. The shifts are from 7-9:30 p.m. and 7-10 a.m.

Ashland Public Library on Weekend Mornings

The library opens its doors at noon on weekends. To help people get out of the cold, we have been reserving the Gresham Room downstairs from 7:30 am – noon for folks to come in and get hot coffee and breakfast. Volunteer hosts come at 9 to help serve food, organize our clothing tables, help with clean-up between 11-noon.

Opportunities To Cook and Prepare Meals

We will be serving breakfast and dinner at the Winter Shelter from January 1st- April 1st. We are expecting to serve food to about 20 people. We need Volunteers who would like to help serve and those that would rather just cook. Also, perhaps you would just like to help one time to try it out. That’s fine, as we can freeze the food you make for future use. We also get food donations that we can share with you if you are not able to purchase all the food yourself.

We also need 2 more people to help with serving breakfast at the campground next to the police station. We have been bringing breakfast there from 7:30-8:30 since May. If you are available to do that once a week, we could really use your help. There are usually around 15 people who eat breakfast.

Storage Aid

We are very excited to be starting a new program for storage at the campground next to the police station. Folks at the campground have to take their tent down every morning by 9 a.m. and put it back up after 4:30 in the afternoon. The city has moved a ‘pallet house’ with shelves and totes to the parking lot. Each camper will be assigned one tote. Storage aids will come for an hour each morning and an hour each afternoon to unlock the storage facility and hand each camper their own storage tote. We need two volunteers for each shift, AM & PM.

For more information about all volunteer opportunities, please text or call me, Avram Sacks, at 541-220-7307. To volunteer for helping with Storage, you email Helena at helenafturner@gmail.com.