Six Springfield churches are working together to try to expand cold weather shelter options for the city’s homeless this winter.
The Connecting Grounds, Brentwood Christian Church, National Avenue Christian Church, First Unitarian Universalist, Unity of Springfield and Pitts Chapel United Methodist are raising money to fund two different projects.
One is an alternative shelter site that would be open every night during the winter. It would be open to anyone regardless of gender, which would allow couples to stay together.
The other is cold weather outreach. Last winter, The Connecting Grounds created a nightly outreach team to check on those who could not access shelter and to distribute supplies. The churches would like to expand that outreach with more volunteers and more items distributed.
A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to raise $175,000 to find the two projects.
