Teens Feed the Homeless at St. Hilary Church

March 9, 2015

On March 5, 2015, a group of Teen Service Corps students gathered at St. Hilary Church in Tiburon to prepare and serve meals to 25 homeless men from Marin County.  St. Hilary is one of 15 parishes in Marin that provide food and shelter to the homeless from November through April. The community-wide, interfaith program is called REST (Rotating Emergency Shelter Team) .

The teens prepared homemade lasagnas, soup, salads, dinner rolls and lots of desserts for the homeless men, who slept the night in the church’s parish hall.

“We sat down and ate dinner with the men,” said Matthew Walravens, the Director of Communications for the Teen Service Corps. “They are good people, just like you and me. For many reasons, they don’t have a place to call home. I’m glad we can help them.”

According to a survey by Marin County?s Health and Human Services Department (2011), there were 1,200 people
counted as living homeless, in temporary shelter, or in transitional housing in Marin, while 4,103 were considered “precariously housed” and at risk of homelessness. This is up sharply from the 2009 count. Homeward Bound’s Mill Street Center in San Rafael hosts the only 55 emergency shelter beds in the county, which are available to individuals only and not families. The REST program doubles this number of people who are sheltered.