SUMMER 2020

Dear Egan Volunteers, Site Hosts, Partners and Friends,

Belated thanks for your service this past winter! Egan season quickly became COVID-19 season and we never took a proper moment to thank you. Below are some numbers from the season to remind you how many people you helped. First, however, a note about this past season and where we go from here.

The 2019-2020 season was anything but normal from beginning to end, bookended by an early opening in October and COVID-19 in March.

Egan Warming Center officially opens November 15, but an early cold spell in late October pushed us to open early. Just before Halloween, with help from local government, we sheltered more than 340 people over two nights in Wheeler Pavilion at Lane Events Center (fairgrounds).

Egan returned to the fairgrounds in March when the reality of COVID hit and we had to consolidate resources. We were facing a string of freezing nights, hundreds of unhoused neighbors with no place to shelter-in-place, hundreds of volunteers who are 60+ years of age, and warming center sites that couldn’t compromise the safety of their regular congregants, members and visitors. Using the fairgrounds, our Springfield site, and our youth site at First United Methodist Church, we successfully completed our mission with fewer sites and even fewer volunteers.

For this coming winter, at this point there are more questions than answers. Our goal as always is to provide low barrier shelter for all who seek it, but how we accomplish that may look very different from previous years. Despite the challenges, we are optimistic and comforted by your tireless compassion and commitment.

We will update you in the coming months as we have more information.

Now, a quick look at the numbers from the 2019-2020 Egan Warming Center season:

14…….Number of nights open, including two in October

4,043…….Number of guests welcomed (turnstile number, i.e., includes repeat guests)

1,373…….Number of unique individuals we helped

869…….Number of volunteers who worked at least one shift

3,483…….Number of filled volunteer shifts

14,780…….Number of volunteer hours. This is a conservative estimate from Sign-Up that doesn’t include unreported hours by site leads, schedulers, site liaisons, shuttle and supply drivers, musicians and countless more

1…….What Egan Warming Center is all about: 1 volunteer, helping save 1 neighbor without shelter, 1 night at a time.

On behalf of St. Vincent de Paul and your Egan Warming Center team, thank you for all of your efforts in making the winter a success. Because of you, our community remembers and honors Thomas Egan, knowing that Egan Warming Center stands for compassion, kindness and service.

Thank you again.