Charleston Crisis Ministries
Debbie Waid, Interim Executive Director
Katiri Berry, Soup Kitchen Director
573 Meeting St.
P.O. Box 20038
Charleston, S.C. 29413
(803) 723-9477

This historic Southern city of 89,000 had no real facilities for homeless people until the unusually cold winter of 1984 prompted the mayor to call together community leaders, including many ministers of local churches, and ask them to study the needs of homeless people on Charleston's streets. Two answers became immediately obvious, Debbie Waid said: Shelter, and food.

This ecumenical non-profit group, then called "Charleston Interfaith Crisis Ministry," filled the gap, and it quickly evolved into a multiple-service agency providing a holistic "continuum of care," offering a range of needed services ranging from emergency assistance through counseling and case management to self-reliance programs. Now the state's largest provider of services to homeless people, it operates a "one-stop shopping" program based on the conscious realization that public transportation is limited in Charleston, and it's difficult for poor and homeless people to get around to decentralized services.

The agency's shelter services started in a community center, moved to a YMCA, and came in 1986 to its current home, a two-story brown brick facility in an inner-city neighborhood once the home of an auto-parts warehouse and which was leased for $1 a year from a grocery corporation unitl November of 1992 when the property was given to them.

This building houses both the Men's Shelter, a two-dormitory operation providing primarily night shelter (although it also opens during the day in bad weather) to as many as 170 homeless men; and the Family Shelter and Day Center, offering shelter and case management to as many as 80 single mothers and children.

The Soup Kitchen, originally an independent program sponsored by an Episcopal Church, merged with Crisis Ministries in its new quarters 1987, taking advantage of the professional kitchen facilities there. Serving about 200 people a day -- not just shelter residents but "anyone who is hungry," the soup kitchen's entire bill of fare is made up of perishable food donated by area restaurants and institutions, collected and distributed to the soup kitchen and other city food providers by Crisis Ministries' refrigerated truck.

Other key programs include: Social services and case management aimed at breaking the cycle of homelessness; mental-health and substance-abuse programs staffed by trained counselors, a psychiatrist and psychiatric registered nurses; a primary health-care center operating daily, and a weekly medical clinic staffed entirely by volunteer physicians; a monthly legal clinic staffed by volunteer lawyers; and Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups.

In more recent developments, Crisis Ministries is moving into job training. An innovative program offers women residents of the Family Shelter a one-week course in very basic food-preparation skills, a quick-and-simple initiative aimed not at certification but at giving them an edge up on the competition in seeking the food-service jobs that abound in Charleston's tourist economy.

A more advanced job-readiness program came about when staff found that homeless folks were getting jobs but weren't KEEPING jobs. This five-week course, open to men and women, covers the basics of job-seeking, interviewing, and emphasizes such basic but important issues as showing up for work on time, well dressed and clean, getting along with supervisors and co-workers, and reporting in when you're sick and must miss work. This program has been in abeyance recently due to the loss of a staff member, but it was set to resume in April 1996. Waid estimated that 40 individuals have completed the course, and at least half of them are currently employed.

With a staff of 33 and an annual budget just over $1 million, Crisis Ministries depends heavily on volunteers -- an estimated 5,000 of them annually -- to keep things going.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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