Clifton Sanctuary Ministries

This past school year we went to visit the students of the gifted class at Garden Hills Elementary School in Atlanta.  They were doing a class project on homelessness and e-mailed Clifton 30 very impressive questions on the subject in an interview format.  They invited us to come and do an educational presentation. So we did, and as it turned out one of the students was from Morningside Presbyterian Church. He suggested that each home room in the school make a welcome basket for our guests who are moving to Joe’s Place or getting their own apartments through Clifton Living just like his church does. As you can see from the picture above they did a tremendous job! 

Thank you so much Garden Hills!

Recently we were visited by 20 6th and 8th grade students from Wake Forest, NC who were in Atlanta doing a Haiti simulation misson training. They slept in makeshift huts for a week in 90 degree weather and ate uncooked food from trash bags to gain a deeper empathy for what the earthquake survivors are going through in that nation.

After 5 days of intense heat and no showers they headed over to Clifton sanctuary Ministries where they volunteered for 9 hours before finally being able to retire to a motel to cool off and clean up.

Our clothing closet had backed up with donations for a few weeks so they had mounds of clothes to sort by type, condition and size. The enitre dining are of Night Hosspitality looked like a clothing factory as they set up tables and beagn building piles. Many of the clothes needed to be washed and folded so they did that too.  They swept and cleaned the downstairs, polished the stainless steel freezers and ice machines and then took a very short break as they waited for our guests to come home so they could serve them dinner alongside of our dear friends at Community Friendship.  

The group was amazing, especially considering what they had already gone through during the earlier part of the week. And they really made the clothing closet ship shape once again. Thank you Wake Forest and Thank you Community Friendship!

OptumHealth

Recently we recived a phone call from Carmen M. Aponte, Sr. Administrative Assistant at OptumHealth  in Plano Texas. She explained that OptumHealth was having it’s 2nd quarter meeting in Atlanta at their Dunwoody offices and they wanted to do a community service activity with their budget instead of the usual corporate dinner. They found out about Clifton from our web page and contacted us. They asked everyone attending the meeting to bring one of each thing on the Clifton wish list. Clifton Resident Manager Reggie Jones took the seats out of the Clifton van and drove it  to the headquarters near Perimeter Mall and loaded  it up with the bags of donations while Donald Long talked to the board members about the many wonderful things that Clifton does. One board member followed Donald to the elevator and wrote out a personal check while thanking Clifton for the work that we do. You just never know where your blessings will come from. THANK YOU OPTUMHEALTH!