HALO Ministries in need of volunteers
HALO Ministries in Salisbury needs help. The shelter tells 47 ABC they’re stretched thin and they’re desperate for volunteers.
The shelter says they serve anywhere from one-hundred and twenty to one-eighty meals every night during dinner. This number is way up from years prior due to a number of reasons.
HALO ministries have served forty-two thousand- eight-hundred and twenty-four meals their guests since January. That’s already well over half the sixty-one thousand meals they served for all of 2014. At this rate, executive director, Celeste Savage, worries what this means for the remaining 5 months of this year.
Savage says, “This past December we were blessed to be able to open the men’s facility and with that and the growth of guests coming in, we’ve really increased.”
Also, the summer means a lull in college students who volunteer at the shelter for community service hours. HALO is strapped for resources in their men’s and women’s shelters, day facility, bargain center and particularly in their Cafe’. It operates like a full service kitchen.
Unlike the shelters, the café doesn’t have a cap on the number of people they assist.
Darin Saulsbury, the food service coordinator at the shelter says, “If you are hungry and in Salisbury, or in the surrounding areas, we will never turn anyone away from having a meal.”
In order to compensate for the shortage, the current volunteers have been working double shifts. Just last week, the ministry served one thousand- seven- hundred and forty- four meals. That increased demand puts other food projects on hold.
Saulsbury continues, “On the weekends, we serve bagged lunches Saturday and Sunday. We’re not yet to the point where we can do hot lunches.”
If you’re on the fence about volunteering, but need a little extra push to help out Savage says this, “They come in with this attitude of well I’ll go serve and help this person. When they leave, they leave with ‘Wow I got more out of it than what I really put into it.”
Every volunteer at the shelter has to be trained. The training takes place the third Sunday of every month. Leaders there say anyone is welcome. For example, service groups, businesses and companies.
