The Gate 2019

The kitchen was running at full tilt today prepping today's meal and some of tomorrow's, with all of the kitchen assistants working head down in all the areas. It took about three hours before I worked opposite a sister team and we were able to say hello, exchange names and have a chat. The industrial dishwasher broke down yesterday so we have had to switch to manual to wash-up so we second in a pair of general volunteers to join us and then slave over the oven steel trays and pans and then hundreds of plates and cutlery. They fired up their phone Spotify which drowned out the ever present karaoke coming in from the general guest and volunteer area. A dash down to the local superstore to buy up their entire range of breadcrumbs (sorry shoppers too slow), to coat hundreds of of fantastic fish, vegetarian and vegan cakes being handmade by a team of four, racing to see who could make the most the fastest. One of the sisters ending up in hospital with unexpected anaphylacti...

After Sunday's setup we have opened the doors today as one of Crisis At Christmas 24 hour residential centres  supported by a three-shift volunteer system providing full services. I would normally say that we expect the first day to be quiet, but all of the beds you see here are now taken and likely in use for the week! We have the capibility to expand our sleeping (and catering) capacity and I'll let you know what happens when the shops close for the seasonal break and more guests usually arrive. Whilst Crisis At Christmas has several London temporary residential centres, much bigger than ours, The Gate is special because we only take in guests with significant alcohol, drug or other addictions. Experience has shown that this subset of London's homeless will not come indoors unless we cater for them differently, if that wasn't the case they'd stay outdoors and it would be impossible to do practical or effective outreach with them. The Gate takes referrals ...

The Gate opens tomorrow for service, more on that in a later post, but today a group of volunteers have about five hours to unload the trucks, open the boxes and prepare the building to be ready to offer a place off the streets over Christmas. The Gate opens each year in a new site to keep its location secret, ensure the neighbours barely know we have arrived until we leabe and to make use of whatever building is available for us to takeover. For the past few years Crisis At Christmas have been offered London academy sites around London that come with all mod cons, hot water, working toilets, industrial-grade kitchens and gyms that make for great sleeping areas. In years past this was not the case and a loan building could be close to demolition or neglected, since then Crisis At Christmas has built a good reputation with landlords thanks to handing back their sites in great condition, at least as good as today's handover to us just a lot cleaner. We have boxed up and st...

On 1st October The Crisis Volunteering page opened online looking to fill 11,000 posts over Christmas, it feels like we've only just ended summer so it's time to start thinking about what I'll be doing this Christmas. I've signed up for The Gate of course, for the week, and see that it has relocated eastwards towards Tower Bridge, last year you may recall I wrote about our week in Battersea - link