HFF Junior Board Blog Post: 1st Shelter Service Day

As rain fell mercilessly upon the roof of the shelter on Saturday, July 21, it dawned on me, while I stared at the cascading raindrops through the window pane, that there were countless families and individuals living outside, struggling to find refuge from the torrent. Such a realization provoked an urgency for me to work harder, faster to prepare a room for an incoming family.

Instead of sleeping until 10 am and reading in my bed until lunchtime, as I would have done on most rainy Saturdays, I spent the morning cleaning a sink, toilet, and windows with my fellow junior board members. Though it may sound inconsequential, this is the kind of work that is emblematic of the mission of Housing Families First, an organization that provides solace from the ills of the natural and political world. It is a place to float atop the tides of
evictions and to escape the deluge of homelessness, a cycle that wrenches families with the force of a riptide.

These harsh realities accentuated the value of my volunteer work. Maybe with just a little more elbow grease, a little more cleansing, and a little more care, perhaps, scrub by scrub, I can do my part in extending a raft to help buoy a family out of a relentless storm.

Want to get involved? Find out how you can help move Richmond families out of homelessness today.

Written by: Jovan Burton. Jovan is a graduate of Hampton-Sydney College. He works as a Tax Credit Allocation Coordinator for the Virginia Housing Development Authority (VHDA).