Day 3

We started day three by heading over to the Welcome Inn Community Center. It was about a 10-minute drive from the Sherman house. On the way to the Center, we noticed how beautiful the neighborhood was. We were curious about the cost of the homes, so I downloaded Zillow and found out one of the cheaper houses was around $360,000! We were all surprised how expensive the houses were, especially compared to Erie's housing market.

When we got to the Community Center, we were welcomed and given a brief description of what the Center did. On Tuesday, they have a Senior luncheon, and every other day they have a food bank. These are just two of the many services they have for their community. Their motto is asset-based community development. Once we got a sense of what the Community Center does, we divided into two groups. One group stayed at the Center and helped prepare the lunch for the Senior luncheon. The other group went to the New Horizons (a thrift store owned by the Welcome Inn) to help organize the backroom.

The New Horizon group consisted of Brent, Megan, Ariel, Abby, and me. It was a four-minute walk to the store, and we got to see some of the other community centers that Hamilton had to offer. Amanda is the manager of the store, and she gave us a tour of the shop and explained why the community center owned a shop. The main point of the store is not to make a profit, but to allow people to develop skills that they can use in the real world. In addition, it also gives people a place to shop for a pretty reasonable price. Books are $0.50, clothes were about $1-$3, and toys were not priced, they believe that people should not pay much for toys. Abby, Ariel, and I started cleaning out some of the holiday boxes in the back, and while Brent and Megan set up Saint Patrick's day display.

At noon we headed back to the Welcome Inn Community Center. We had a great lunch with some seniors in the community. I had a great opportunity to talk to a woman about what the future holds for the community. In the past few years, a lot of upper-class people started moving from Toronto to Hamilton, causing the housing market to go up. She explains how this made a massive impact on their impoverished community by limiting their affordable housing. They are doing their best to fight off these changes, and she hopes for the best, the community is sticking together through the changes.

After lunch, we headed back to the thrift store to finish up going through the seasonal boxes and talk to Amanda a bit more before we left. After finishing up, we headed back to the Sherman house. None of the core members were back from their day program, so the majority of the group decided to take a quick power nap. When the core members got back from their programs we all hung out in the family room. Two core members showed us the scrapbooks of their life; it was amazing to see photos of them when they were younger. We played some catch with a big ball before heading over to our dinner homes.

Carrie and I ate dinner at the Laddies home. It is three women who live more independently than most of the other L'arche homes. They have an apartment that is attached to the one L'arche home. We caught up with each other before sitting down to dinner; we had pasta with veggies. It was outstanding! After dinner, we wanted to watch the movie Frozen II. However, their DVD player broke, so we asked the conjoining L'arche home if they wanted to watch it all together in their family room. They agreed, and we combined houses for a little movie night. I have never seen Frozen II before, and it was way more than I was expecting. After the movie, we headed back to the Sherman house for reflection and to get ready for bed.

-Ella Rasper