Interfaith effort provides food and shelter to area’s homeless

During last winter’s coldest months, 4,200 plates of hot food were served to women and men—those without homes or the provisions to eat—through the Fox Valley Warming Shelter. The FSPA awarded a ministry grant earmarked for food to the program that fed 214 homeless clients in seven cities, surrounding and including Appleton, Wis., from October to April.

For three years the shelter program has met this intrinsic need through the hospitality of 28 different churches of every denomination in the Fox Valley area. In one-week intervals on a rotating basis, participating churches like Appleton’s St. Joseph Catholic Church (the first to open its doors) have not only served late evening supper and early morning continental breakfast, but have also provided temporary overnight shelter and sleeping accommodations.

Many clients eat and sleep there for an average of 19 nights. They may have been turned away from Fox Valley’s Emergency Shelter, an occurrence that actualizes the need. According to a July 30, 2010, article published in the Appleton Post Crescent, a recent point-in-time survey taken statewide to gauge the homeless population in the community found 50 people living in cars or outdoors. Fox Valley reports that on any given night last winter around 20 of those people were fed and kept warm inside one of their rotating shelters.

Fox Valley Warming Shelter is facilitated by only one full-time employee—Executive Director Brad Vivoda. Brad offers these statistics, coordinates the program and qualifies the ministry as “a hand up, not a hand out.” Staff members and volunteers “offer mental, physical and spiritual guidance to the poor who stay at the shelter,” as well as encouragement to seek permanent housing, health care and social service assistance. Any one of those people searching for help, he says, may be an 18 year old who has fled from home or an out-of-work professional with a doctorate degree. “We are seeing more women and those with mental illness and/or alcohol and other drug abuse issues.” All of the clients at the shelter are encouraged “to grow and to take responsibility for their lives with unconditional love.”

When Brad says “we,” he is referring in part to the 2,100 volunteers who help to facilitate the program. Among them is FSPA Affiliate Ann Fox, who takes any volunteer roles to be filled. “I’ve prepared food at home—casseroles, soup and bread—to deliver to the shelter, and have served meals to the people there as well.” Ann has also worked with staff members through overnight shifts which she “sees as a vigil” to meet any client needs that arise.

In all the ways Ann interacts with the people who come to Fox Valley Warming Shelter, she feels an obligation as an affiliate of the FSPA community to “reach out to our brothers and sisters.” The program is inherent, she says, to the mission of Franciscan faith. “Hospitality is one of our gifts, and for me a way to be that servant we need to be.”

In the same vein, Sister Jo Ann Serwas, a pastoral associate of St. Gabriel Parish in Neenah, Wis., sponsors the FSPA ministry grant that provides funds for food to the shelter program this year. “As Franciscans in the 21st century,” she says, “we are concerned about the many homeless in our area who would not otherwise have sustenance and a place to sleep in the bitter cold of our Wisconsin winter.” Sister Jo Ann also garnered the support of the FSPA community last year to assist in the purchase of a van to transport equipment (cots, blankets and meal service supplies) from church to church each week, and to “accommodate clients from a distance as well as those physically unable to get there,” says Brad.

This October Fox Valley Warming Shelter will open a permanent facility in Appleton to provide essentials as well as social support year round. The stable environment will bolster all under its roof—the facilitators, staff, volunteers and Fox Valley clients who seek a solid foundation in their lives. “The homeless need both physical and spiritual food in order to successfully transition back into independent housing,” says Brad. “Knowing we have the prayers and financial backing of FSPA has been a huge blessing for the shelter.”