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Tuesday pick-up will be at the Central Christian Church, 1475 N. Washington Ave.
Volunteers with the Connecting Grounds Church and Gathering Friends will provide a meal beginning at 5 p.m. at the pick-up location. Pick-up times for transportation to Crisis Cold Weather Shelters are as follows:
First Unitarian Universalist Pick-up at 6:30 p.m.
East Sunshine Pick-up at 7:30 p.m.
Bus passes will be provided throughout the day at the O’Reilly Center for Hope and during the evening meal for women accessing shelter at Grace United Methodist, which will open at 8:15 p.m.
Plans for Wednesday night are still being worked out. This story will be updated when more information is available.
Most of those cold weather shelters were hosted by churches, and all were staffed by volunteers.
Springfield s cold weather shelters open on nights when the National Weather Service predicts the overnight temperature to dip down to 32 degrees or colder.
The shelters opened on 72 nights this past winter, according to information presented at the Ozarks Alliance to End Homelessness board meeting on Wednesday.
An average of 80 people were served each night the shelters were open, Community Partnership of the Ozarks Continuum of Care Coordinator Amanda Stadler told the board. In February, we saw the highest number of folks served per night, Stadler said, adding that 112 was the nightly average in February.
Knowing food can be scarce for Valencia County families and sometimes even harder to come by during the pandemic, local volunteers and organizations are making use of a federal program to get nutritious, fresh food into the hands of those who need it most.
On Friday, Feb. 5, a semi truck hauling 1,300 boxes of food was met by a small army of volunteers from local churches, businesses and community centers to distribute the food across the county.
The boxes come from the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, a USDA grant program that partners with national, regional and local distributors, to purchase fresh produce, dairy and meat products from American producers of all sizes.