New Around the Mission
Atlanta Heath Day: First-time Volunteer Jitters
October 15, 2010
Guest Article by Anne Corbitt
Volunteers help guests sharpen interview skills and revise resumes
Two thousand travel-size deodorants. Nine hundred pairs of reading glasses. Eight hundred pounds of bananas. Two thousand bags of chips. Three hundred bottles of eye drops. Three thousand pairs of jeans. One thousand toothbrushes. Three school buses. One city block.
If you consider Health Day by the numbers alone, you get a sense of its size. This annual event, coordinated by Lazarus Ministries and SafeHouse Outreach, required months of planning and a staggering number of shopping bags, band aids, and packets of mustard. On September 19, 2010, a block of downtown Atlanta was shut off from traffic to create space for over 600 of Atlanta’s homeless residents to receive medical care, dental screenings, financial counseling, resume and interview workshops, gently-used and new clothes and haircuts.
The day also offered food, a dance contest, karaoke, bingo, cornhole, face painting and a dunk tank. It closed with a worship service led by members and staff from Trinity Anglican Mission. Over 400 volunteers contributed to these resources, a number almost doubled from previous years. The money involved in pulling off an event of this magnitude was also remarkable: just over $17 per guest.
But as impressive as these figures are, numbers can’t reveal the scope of this event. For that, you have to see it firsthand.
Over 3,000 pairs of jeans were handed out to men, women, and children at Health Day.
This was my first time attending Health Day. With limited experience interacting with people I typically see only through a car window, I didn’t know what to expect. I was worried I wouldn’t know what to say to people or how to start conversations; that maybe my nerves would show. I approached Ellis Street that day with unsure steps and an anxious feeling in my stomach.
I could hear the music and voices of Health Day from a block away. As we approached the check-in counter, I was struck by how many people were already there. Some were waiting in line for the dental screenings on the left while others got their pictures taken or played checkers at the tables spread up the middle of the street. The day had just begun, but already this was the busiest block downtown.
I’d signed up to help with resumes and job training, the farthest station up the hill. Those volunteers with laptops were setting up email addresses and formatting resumes while others prepared for interview workshops, which included wardrobe counseling and mock interviews. But since the crowds had to pass the dunk tank and towers of blue jeans before reaching our station, I had the opportunity to step away from my post and visit other tables.
Professionals treat guests to manicures and pedicures — a much-needed opportunity to relax.
I visited the hygiene station, where some volunteers knelt to provide manicures and pedicures, while others offered haircuts and shaves. In the clothing lines nearby, guests selected shoes and socks. A friend noted how one guest sat to slowly and carefully pull on his new pair of socks, an act many of us take for granted.
A trio of strong-armed children schooled us at cornhole, and so I tried my hand at bingo. The men at our table taught me the art of playing ten boards at once and, when none of our boards won, we accepted defeat by plotting how we’d handle a dozen boards next time.
We clapped along with the most intimidating karaoke line-up I’ve ever seen. One full voice after another echoed off the buildings with an a cappella version of “The Old Rugged Cross,” original raps, even a Miley Cyrus song, but the highlight had to be the little boy who sang “Jesus Loves Me.” After each singer, the crowd clapped while everyone at our table repeated the same line: I’d hate to have to follow that.
As the sun set, the day shifted gears. We folded up tables, set the chairs in lines, passed out flyers with lyrics and readied ourselves for a worship service in the street. During the singing, the musicians shut off the generator for a minute, silencing their instruments and microphones, and there on a block in downtown Atlanta, hundreds of voices joined in praise as the hum of a city became background noise.
Anne Corbitt
And I thought about the lines that daily divide us: racial and cultural lines, socioeconomic levels, the glass of our car windows, where we sleep, how many things we own that we don’t need. I was embarrassed by the nerves I’d felt just hours earlier, when these lines had seemed so fixed and looming. There’s no denying that these divisions impact who we are, but they aren’t the whole story. Like the numbers quantifying Health Day itself, these lines leave something huge out: we aren’t divided in the eyes of God.
In the days since Health Day, as I’ve continued to discuss its impact with other volunteers, I’ve found this reaction to be fairly universal. As one friend remarked, the most memorable aspect of the event was the mix of people, how she often didn’t know who was a volunteer and who was a guest. We all wore the same name tags and ate the same lunches, and the lines that often feel more like concrete walls between us became, for an afternoon, hard to see.
At Health Day, we got a glimpse of the world as it could be. And in it, I was constantly reminded that Jesus was specific; He came for all, but He also came for each. So rather than thinking of the homeless as some vague demographic, the numbers overwhelming when we consider every city, state, country and continent where people go without, we saw how we can start by crossing our borders, stepping over our lines for a day.
One day doesn’t change the world, a city or our lives. But one day can remind us of the need that exists—both for the homeless and those with homes—and of the individual and collective power we have to meet that need, whether one person or a thousand toothbrushes at a time.
Toward the close of that night’s service, we took communion, and I thought back to a moment earlier in the afternoon when we’d noticed a group of tourists taking pictures from the end of the block. A friend had wondered what this event might look like from the outside, and as the night ended, I prayed that in those photographs, we would appear the way it felt: like a community gathered to enjoy the summer day.
Posted By: Anne Corbitt
Categories: Faith in Action
