This report covers the period 1st December 2016 to 30th March 2017 – our second year of operation as a Winter Cold Weather Night Shelter. As last year, we operated from one venue (Gravesend Methodist Church, Milton Road, Gravesend – GMC) on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday nights, which are the times the venue is available to us.
Although the night shelter started in December 2017, we had been operating “Drop-In” sessions on Thursday and Sunday Nights for meals since the beginning of October, and providing a range of daytime activities throughout the year that included showers, laundry, and clothes bank to our guests.
Also new for this winter was the opening of the Sanctuary office on the first floor of GMC that was staffed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to support the daytime work done there.
As suspected, we have seen a big increase in the number of guests accessing Sanctuary Services both during the day and overnight. This was made more difficult by a shortfall in volunteers over last year but we are pleased to report that those volunteers, all 133 of them, did a great job and no one was turned away who came to us for help.
In terms of ‘Headline’ numbers, between December 2016 – March 2017:
- 170 Individual guests attended Sanctuary
- 712 ‘sleeps on the street prevented
- 1,813 hot meals served
- 14,228 volunteer hours given
You can download the full report from here: Sanctuary Winter Report 2017
