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NORFOLK, Va. - If there’s one thing Sailors know how to do well, it’s clean. Ship and personnel readiness are major components to mission success, and that extends to include a well-kept space.
The concept takes on new meaning for the Sailors from amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), who use their cleaning powers for the greater good.
In conjunction with the ship’s Junior Petty Officer Association (JPOA), Mesa Verde Sailors have been volunteering monthly to clean emergency housing provided by the Samaritan House for local victims of domestic abuse and homelessness.
“For some people it may seem like such a small, very insignificant thing, but for us, and for our clients… it’s huge,” said Melody Sanders, volunteer and shelter coordinator for Samaritan House. “People are coming in from crisis, their lives are in upheaval, they don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and to be able to walk into a house where it’s comfortable and clean, that little thing can make such a huge difference.”
Samaritan House is Virginia Beach’s domestic violence resource, servicing the area since 1984. Samaritan House’s mission is to foster personal safety, self-sufficiency and personal growth in adults and their children through initiatives targeting domestic abuse and homelessness.
“You have to start with safety,” said Rebecca Headings, a Samaritan House direct services team leader and housing stabilization advocate. “If someone doesn’t feel safe, they are not going to be successful in any other part of their life. And so, whether they feel safe because they were just able to talk to someone and feel validated, or they feel safe because they’re in a physical structure that is unknown to their perpetrator… I think it’s absolutely essential to a person’s sometimes survival, but sometimes just success.”
Fire Controlman 2nd Class (SW) Jessica Allbright, Mesa Verde’s JPOA vice president, first learned about Samaritan House during April’s sexual assault prevention awareness month, and said there’s been an amazing response from the ship’s crew.
“People love it. You just feel good when you do something for somebody else,” Allbright said. “We get to be outside of just the Navy and be friends and get together to do something good.”
Mesa Verde’s JPOA also holds monthly drives to support
some of the other programs Samaritan House provides.
In addition to limited, short-term emergency housing, Samaritan House also offers services to stop violence with education and training, a 24-hour crisis hotline, safety planning and court assistance, counseling, support groups, children’s programs and job readiness programs.
Mesa Verde Sailors have also collected food, clothing and supplies for hurricane kits through the JPOA drives.
Through Allbright and the other JPOA members, the volunteering has also spread to include other command’s JPOAs. Samaritan House employees said that’s just a fraction of the Navy’s impact on the organization.
“There are a lot of different commands that really support us,” said Sanders. “We definitely appreciate everything that you guys do for us.”
Although the commitment from Mesa Verde Sailors may seem slight, Samaritan House’s community footprint is large. During fiscal year 2014-2015, with their 11 emergency homes, Samaritan House served 204 adults and 244 children, with eight persons reported to be active duty or a military dependent, according to Headings. Clients stayed in their emergency shelters for an average of 53 days, with the ultimate goal being to move them into permanent housing through assistance and resources.
The Sailors who spend hours scrubbing carpets by hand, painting walls and trimming weeds in the backyards never interact with the people in the program directly, for both the safety of the clients and the Sailors.
Allbright said this points to the motivation of the volunteers, because it’s not about the immediate gratification or getting a personal ‘thank you.’ For her, it’s about placing yourself in the victim’s shoes.
“A couple of us, some of us, cry about it because it’s so sad,” Allbright said. “I feel so privileged to have all this stuff and to never have been in that type of situation, so when you’re cleaning up and you’re trying to make whatever they are given the best possible, you just want to try to do whatever you can for them.”
Samaritan House’s employees and volunteers who work directly with clients receive training for the vicarious trauma they often experience, which is another reason Sailors don’t interact with clients.
Sanders and Headings have seen some of the worst sides of humanity, from a client deprived of all nutrition who was so weak she could barely drink water, children subjected to sexual abuse, to a client whose head was beaten in by a hammer.
“I think the day that things like that don’t make me lose a little bit of sleep is the day I need to stop doing this job,” Headings said, who has worked at Samaritan House for 11 years. “Sometimes you do develop a little bit of a tough skin, because if you didn’t you’d cry on every single phone call, and you can’t do that.”
But both women said what keeps them motivated is the transformation they are able to see in their clients’ lives, which stems from the full-circle of services their organization provides.
“Reflecting back on some of our success stories, and thinking about some of the worst case scenarios... for that individual to be able to, first of all, survive it, and to be able to gain the strength… to get the strength to actually stand up for themselves because they have the support,” Sanders said.
Even though the Sailors don’t meet the people in emergency housing when they volunteer, Headings said that the impact is still present.
“How do you know that you’re not working right beside someone who’s staying in a shelter?” Headings said. “You really don’t know that, though you’re not meeting the person who’s staying in that emergency house right this minute, you’re not really meeting someone who has very recently walked down that path and very recently was experiencing some kind of trauma… That’s why it’s always so important that we’re careful about what we say about ‘those people,’ you never know, the person next to you could have been one of ‘those people.’”
Mesa Verde is currently undergoing routine maintenance following her return from a nine-month deployment in 2014.
For more information about Samaritan House, visit http://www.samaritanhouseva.org.
| Date Taken: | 07.28.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 07.29.2015 14:45 |
| Story ID: | 171458 |
| Location: | NORFOLK, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 38 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Mesa Verde Sailors help victims of domestic violence, homelessness in Hampton Roads, by CPO Shannon Smith, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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