Cold Nights and Long Days A Comparison of Male and Female Volunteers in a Night Shelter

Abstract

Grassroots night shelters are becoming a common local reaction to the all too common experience of the homeless suffering and sometimes freezing to death on city streets. With government funds unavailable, many communities have turned to churches for leadership in addressing the problem. Frequently the result is a volun teer administered and staffed human service organization. One example is St. Mat thew's Night Shelter in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Seventeen churches and a variety of unaffiliated individuals direct and staff the shelter for three months each winter. St. Matthew's just completed the second year of operation. Nearly two hundred volun teers spent a night at the shelter each of the first two winters. Despite serving only homeless males, nearly 50 women volunteered each year. When analyzed, the nightly log and the survey data collected after the first year indicated an interesting pattern of differences between male and female volunteer experience. Men appear to focus on the simple purpose of the shelter, that is, keeping homeless men off the streets during the winter months. Women seemed to more often have a personal developmental experience as they got to know, to a small degree, the men of the streets. The paper argues that the differences are a natural consequence of different value systems which evolve from very different value patterns of male/female socialization in American culture.