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Room
for Hope Project a Huge Success
by
Vicki Saalwaechter
Recently the Alliance became part of a great project called Room for Hope, in
conjunction with the Women’s Shelter of Flint.
The Alliance “adopted” a room at the shelter, and agreed to give it
an “extreme home makeover” in just 2 days, as well as to continue to be
responsible for the room’s upkeep for one year.
Marianna Almeida, Jeanette Riviera, and I decided to enthusiastically tackle the
challenge! Marianne and I took a Saturday morning and did a marathon shopping
trip—making every effort to find all of the best bargains! We purchased
mattress pads, sheets, comforters, curtains, shelves, hooks, lamps, and pillows,
among other things. Then we went our
separate ways to pick up cleaning supplies, paint and painting supplies, and an
area rug so that we would be thoroughly prepared come Monday morning!
We arrived promptly at 8:00 AM Monday morning (well, Marianne was prompt—I
arrived at 8:05 AM), and began to work. We moved out the existing furniture and
started patching the walls and ceiling. We patched and sanded and cleaned, and
then Jeannette arrived to tackle the task of painting the ceiling, while
Marianne painted the door, and I continued to get the walls ready to paint. We
were able to get the room completely painted with 2 coats, and get the floor
cleaned and ready for its new rug before we left at 7:30 PM Monday night.
On Tuesday, once again Marianne arrived promptly at 8:00 AM and I followed a few
minutes later! We quickly got to work doing final touch-ups for any places we
had missed, and then finished up the caulking. We moved on to hanging shelves,
robe hooks, and a curtain rod. Jeanette, meanwhile, was out doing a fabulous job
of buying a beautiful, top quality 6-drawer chest of drawers at a great price,
due to her outstanding negotiating skills!
We spent the afternoon putting the finishing touches on the room, then shut
ourselves in to do the most important job of all—putting it all together! We
made up the beds with the new bedding, hung the curtain, put the rug down, and
made sure that everything was just right—then we opened the door to present
our room to the Shelter staff and residents.
The reaction that we received was all that we needed as a reward. The
director said that the room was exactly how she had pictured it in her mind when
she was creating the project, and that the Alliance had been the perfect group
to do the first room. But more important than what the director said was the
reaction of one little boy staying at the shelter when he said, “It looks just
like a home!”
We couldn’t have been more proud of what we had managed to accomplish in just
2 days! We were able to work together as a team and create a room that looked
and felt “just like home” to a little boy who didn’t have one! We thought
that summed up pretty well the definition of a successful project, in addition
to being a great example of how our Alliance is making a real difference right
here in our community.
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