Each year, the Community Engagement Team (CET) at Dungeness Community Church selects a number of local organizations to work with. In addition to supporting these local organizations, we partner to support LIving Water International. Below is one of our recipients for the 2021 Advent Season.
Click to learn more about the 2021 Advent Conspiracy Recipients
ROSS HAMILTON
Well, we are here at the Sequim Police Station with deputy chief, Mike Hill. As I understand it Mike your job is to enforce the law keep the peace and and help people in trouble.
MIKE HILL
That is correct. Is that right? Yep.
ROSS HAMILTON
I understand from others that in the old days, the officers had to dig in their own Pockets to help out people. And now we have a human services fund. So tell us about it and, the history, and maybe some incidents that we might have been able to help
MIKE HILL
Sure the Human Services fun began in April of 2016 through donations from Citizens of Sequim Cares and faith-based organizations. Basically when people have an emergency need, we can provide vouchers for food, transportation, and hygiene. In some cases where Emergency Shelters needed we can get a hotel room for a night or two.
Annually. We see about a hundred people that we give disbursements to, and that's individuals and families at large and it kind of depends on the need. Sometimes transportation is a greater need and we'll give out bus passes on Clallam or Jefferson Transit other times people need fuel for the vehicles and we have fuel vouchers usually 10 to 20 dollars to get them to their next place that they need to get to. Other times food is a greater need so we have vouchers from Safeway where people can take it in there and get food for themselves or their family. The housing situations are always a little more delicate. We've had some some Winters — the snowmageddons that we've heard of so much — and there's people that don't have shelter and we've managed to get them a room for a couple of nights until we can connect them with other longer-term services like Serenity House.
Sometimes we see victims of domestic violence and they no longer have a safe place to stay. So while they're in transition to find a different place. We've provided some stays in hotel rooms for them as well.
ROSS HAMILTON
We are so glad to be able to help you in that regard. We certainly appreciate what you've done and are doing on a daily basis to keep our community safe and those that need help have been provided for so, thank you Mike for What you do every day.
MIKE HILL
We appreciate you guys, appreciate the very generous donation we got recently. I think to date we've Assisted about 700 people since 2016 and that ranges from anywhere from $1,000 a year to near $4,000 a year depending on the need. So what you provided is definitely gonna go back in the community to help a lot of people who need it.
Dungeness Community Church