4Cs show off homeless shelter
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The Christian Community Compassion Center gave a tour of its new homeless shelter to representatives of the county's municipalities and explained the need for fundraising Wednesday.
The CCCC board has set a ribbon cutting for the shelter July 1.
The immediate needs of the shelter besides money are employees. The board hopes to have a staff of two available at the shelter at all times. They hope for one employee to be part-time executive director with a social worker background, two security workers to work 12-hour shifts and one or two others to work through the day with one possibly residing at the shelter.
The board has a goal of raising $50,000 in May and June even if it is in increments of $10.
"We want to make people aware and get more people involved, get 10 people to get 10 and each pledge $10. If they can pledge $1 a month that's going to help us. If they pledge $10 a month that will help us. It's not a big donation, it's everyone getting involved with just a little bit," Beyler said.
Helping Hands is available 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays. In the first 2 1/2 months Helping Hands assisted 89 families and 20 of those were new clients, according to Beyler.
The CCCC Food Pantry is open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The food pantry served 335 families with 764 individuals in February with 26 new families.
The shelter was built between July 2009 and March of this year with about 40 volunteers working under the guidance of Marvin Teckenbrock.
The shelter has five sleeping rooms that can fit about 12, an office, a common room with a television, two bathrooms and a kitchen.
Applications for employment are available at the CCCC at the corner of Jackson and Virginia streets between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Donations may be sent to CCCC, P.O. Box 422, Harrisburg, Ill. 62946. Pledge forms are available through the Web site www.saline4c.org.
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DeNeal receives e-mail at http://bdeneal@yourclearwave.com.</li>
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