We start every morning here at the IRC with a meeting in the day room to go over the schedule for the day, answer questions, share information, and often to discuss the inspirational quotes that Jenny puts up on the whiteboard.  The meeting facilitation rotates among the staff; Friday is my morning.  I took the opportunity last Friday to tell the 60 or so people assembled in the day room about a wonderful $15,000 challenge grant we’ve been given to mark our third anniversary.

And then an amazing thing happened–a man put his hand up and said “How can I give a dollar?”, and he followed the question by walking across the room and handing me a dollar.  A woman reached down, unzipped her purse and gave me a dollar.  A man dug into his pocket and pulled out a single wadded up dollar and gave it to me.  In the space of just a couple of minutes I had seven worn, crumpled dollar bills in my hand.  Someone started clapping; someone else joined in and the whole room erupted in spontaneous applause.  I don’t think I was the only one close to tears.

We had 195 people in the building today and expect to see many more by week’s end.  Charles Ewing from Fox8 came by today and did a great story on some of the people who find help at the IRC.  We expect to be giving out a lot of hats and gloves and blankets over the next couple of days.

The year closes out with a wonderful editorial about the IRC in this morning’s News & Record.  As the editorial points out so eloquently the IRC would not exist without the many many hands that make it go, from our partner agencies in the community to the many people who come here for help but also use their time and skills to help the IRC.  Thank you all!

This past Monday we passed a milestone: by the end of the day we had seen 209 people–and every day for the rest of the week the number of people served has come close to the 200 mark.  As the weather gets colder we have lots of reasons to be grateful for our beautiful new large and easy-to-get-to building.  It’s pretty clear that people have found us!

Every month we see–and help–more and more people.  Here are the statistics for November 2011:

INTAKES:  191 (in November 2010 we did 74 intakes!  Quite a change…)             

Part-time jobs found: 14

Full-time permanent jobs found: 11

TOTAL JOBS FOUND:  25

Emergency shelter placements: 20
Transitional housing placement: 1
Permanent housing by household: 12

            Total adults assisted: 41

            Total children assisted: 12

TOTAL INDIVIDUALS SHELTERED OR HOUSED:  53

And we couldn’t do it without our wonderful volunteers…

VOLUNTEER HOURS DONATED: 2,089!!

Nothing is ever quite as easy as it’s supposed to be.  Somewhere in the process of sending out our year-end mailing some names and addresses got scrambled.  If you received a letter from the IRC addressed to someone else our sincere apologies—we’ve got your name and address correctly in our system, we just had an unfriendly visit from the Grinch on this particular mailing.  It won’t happen again.

Here’s how you can still send a donation to the IRC before the year is out: If you still have a remittance envelope from us simply fill it out and mail it back. If you have discarded the envelope you can always give through our secure online donation process at www.gsodaycenter.org.

Thanks so much for your support!