A chat with the Tuesday team.
Ellie is one of our trustees and also manages the volunteers, keeping everyone up to date with training and those awfully time consuming police disclosure checks. She describes the team as "a talented and diverse bunch, jacks of all trades and masters of lots." After working for five years with rough sleepers in Slough, she retired to Dorchester, met Margaret Barker and hasn't looked back. One of her favourite memories at the Hub is of the last Christmas meal cooked by Dave Forrester and his wife. "It was such a fun atmosphere. Everyone was so happy."
Whilst Ellie was sorting out the Hub's dirty washing (literally rather than metaphorically), Penny, the Friends of the Hub co-ordinator and another trustee, was entertaining us with her Nell Gwynne impersonation.
Penny has been involved with helping the homeless for at least 15 years here in Dorchester, right from the Salvation Army and Wayfarers beginnings. Only a short while ago she was touched when the shop workers told her that one of the local lads had left her a teddy bear and thank you note with the message that he finally had a job. She felt that the biggest challenge the Hub has faced, has been getting the current premises built, and now we need to recruit outreach workers to help rehoused clients cope with the newness of life in their own home. If you would like to support this work with as little as £5 a year as a Friend of the Hub (you can of course donate more!) she would love to hear from you on 07900 647689.
Chat at the Hub is always lively, and the new visitor might be hard pushed sometimes to know who is a volunteer and who is a service user. Dave and Steve soon joined in. Steve had been offered two jobs recently, but both fell through when he was unable to offer an address. Dave highlighted the problem that the most any authority will provide for single men is a ticket "back where they came from". When that place holds no significance for them - no family or friends left - it is simply a way of passing the buck rather than genuinely trying to help.
All the service users love to tell their stories and if you would like to give them a little of your time to just listen, why not phone Bob at the Hub to arrange a time to pop in. You can come and talk to some of the volunteers first if you prefer, and find out what is involved before you commit to anything.