Almost 7,000 people are homeless in the city of Boston. Young volunteers offer their free time to help provide health care services for them at city shelters and clinics.
By Magdalena Parker
Over 100 young Bostonians regularly volunteer with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. The organization is the main provider of health care for homeless people in Boston and the Greater New England Area. It serves about 11,000 homeless men, women and children each year and volunteers work at 80 locations in shelters and medical clinics.
Carrie Eldridge-Dickson is the Manager of Volunteer Services and Community Partnerships. She is proud to work for BHCHP and said "it's really easy to get up and come in in the morning when you work for a place that has such a strong mission and is doing such good work in the community. I love being a part of this organization and I'm really proud of the work that we do."
Eldridge-Dickson has worked for the program for almost 3 years now and feels grateful for the young people she works with. She assigns them tasks varying from front desk administrative duties to handing out new socks at the St. Francis House foot clinic on Boylston Street.
Megan Waterman is a graduate student at the Boston University School of Public Health. She has been volunteering with the BHCHP all semester and feels that her work there is crucial to the homeless community in Boston. She feels most needed at Rosie's Place, an all-women's shelter in Roxbury. Rosie's Place has an outreach clinic where Waterman enrolls women in the health care program, making sure they have medical insurance.
Waterman said she didn't feel engaged in the community after moving to Boston from Maine. "It was hard for me to really get in touch with Boston and with public health. This has helped to both put what I'm learning in context and also to make me feel like I am contributing to the community that I'm sort of learning from and taking from."
In the fall, Waterman will be attending the Boston University School of Medicine and hopes to continue her volunteer work. She thinks that, "when you're just a student and you're just going to class, you feel like you're sort of sitting in a community and you're not being part of that community, you're just sucking away. I think that being a volunteer, being involved in an internship somewhere really helps to give back some of that experience and resources that you're taking away as a student."
Colin Burke went to high school in West Roxbury and is now giving back to the community he grew up in. Burke splits his time volunteering between the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans. He is the first face people see as they enter the medical clinic at the NESHV and he helps them get situated.
Burke said, "you gain a lot from it [volunteering] and I think you can learn a lot about where you live. You can learn about your city and about the sort of things that go on that you don't see on a daily basis walking around the streets. It brings a whole new level to your understanding of the way that society works and the way that people are treated who tend to be in marginalized populations."
Burke has volunteered in Boston's homeless community for years now. He started as a student leader taking groups on retreats to shelters, and leading discussions about poverty awareness and homelessness issues. He hopes to continue volunteering and plans on making his career in the health care field.
