The Greencastle community has sprung into action, collaborating with DePauw students to reopen the A-way Home homeless shelter. The shelter closed in 2011 due to financial reasons.
With the nearest homeless shelters to Greencastle almost an hour away in Terre Haute, Indianapolis and West Lafayette, both students and the community realized the urgency and relevancy of the issue.
"Greencastle got the Stellar Community Grant and it's hard to be a stellar community when you don't have an active shelter," said senior Ethan Schweir, a Management Fellows student working on the project. "There's a really big range in the middle where there is a definite need."
A DePauw development team, a group of Management Fellows, is working on the project with the help of the Greencastle community as part of their Management Fellows seminar class.
"The assignment is for groups to find a way to make Greencastle better for everyone," said Gary Lemon, Management Fellows director and advisor to the DePauw Development Team. "[It's students] job is to figure out the finances to make the shelter sustainable."
The main goal of the DePauw Development Team is to get the DePauw community excited about the A-way Home Shelter.
"We're really trying to bolster support, specifically financial support," junior DePauw Development Team member Max Blankenhorn said. "One of the big projects is a philanthropy. We have financial goals in mind of raising $5,000 or 10 percent of the necessary funds in terms of donations."
Schweir stated that there are a few anonymous donors that will match the amount that is raised.
The $5,000 the DePauw Development Team hopes to be able to provide is only one-tenth of the funds a good shelter needs to have donated annually.
Alongside the money that the DePauw Development Team hopes to raise, they also plan on providing volunteer help once the shelter is reopened.
"We're looking at trying to set up a Winter Term program," junior Joe Wojda, a member of the team, said. "Whether it be through one of the offices here dealing with community service, to have someone on campus who can really head-up volunteers and continue support for the shelter year-in, year-out after we're gone."
The Management Fellows students currently working on the project intend for the program's involvement with A-Way Home to be long-term.
"We want to pass [the shelter] down as part of being in Management Fellows," Lemons said. "For freshmen and sophomore members, part of being in Management Fellows would be to maintain the A-Way Home program."
Although the DePauw Management Team is doing a lot of work to help reopen the shelter, the help that they have received from the community has played a large role in their success thus far.
Former DePauw professors John Dittmer, Walker Gillmer and Bob Sedlack, as well as the former pastor of St. Andrews Episcopal Church Bill Wieland, are working to win the support of Greencastle residents and to get the community excited about supporting A-Way Home. The four men also brought in Joel Rekas, the former executive director of Bloomigton's Shalom Community Center, as a consultant.
One of the major problems Rekas found was that A-Way home was functioning both as a single adult shelter and a family shelter. The main change that the group plans to make when the re-open the shelter is to consolidate the shelter's purpose.
Rekas also suggested creating a realistic budget for A-Way Home that is based on the programs offered. They also plan to broaden the donor base.
"A good shelter should get about half of its operating funds from some kind of contributions," Schweir said. "The rest can come from United Way, federal grants, et cetera."
In order to raise the necessary funds, Rekas suggested A-Way Home regularly look for media opportunities, including social media.
While the group has worked hard thus far, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before the shelter can reopen.
"There is no certainty on reopening," Dittmer said. "But we are confident we can work something out."