The Community Day Center of Waltham (CDCW) — a fifteen-minute drive from Newton — provides shelter and support for the unhoused. Starting in a church basement twenty years ago, CDCW has grown as both a drop-in day center and an extension of the MetroWest community. Newtonian volunteers are essential to its success.
Chloe-Rose Crouch, Director of Operations at CDCW, said they offer various services for unhoused individuals, including one-on-one case management, daily lunches, and free showers. Even though the center works primarily with individuals from Waltham, it also assists Newton’s unhoused population.
“Our goal is to get our folks off the streets and ultimately into housing, but also to meet them wherever they are on their journey through homelessness and give them the support that they need,” she said.
While CDCW received the City of Newton’s Emergency Solutions Grant, Crouch said volunteers are also a notable part of what makes the center accessible. They help run the center and ensure it provides individuals with consistent, quality services.
Schmidt-Kittler family
Volunteers from Newton have been particularly hospitable, said Crouch. Among these volunteers are Tamako Takagi and her children, Kaden and Anna Schmidt-Kittler, both high schoolers.
The three originally made meals for the Newton Community Freedge in Nonantum but began helping at CDCW after hearing about it from another volunteer. Kaden, who was not an avid cook beforehand, said being able to help less fortunate individuals has been incredibly valuable. Volunteering at the center makes them feel like they are contributing to their community, “so it just became a full-time commitment,” they said.
As volunteers, Kaden and their sister, Anna, prepare side dishes for CDCW on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Thursdays, they make a full meal. Their mother, Takagi, helps with recipes and food delivery, as Kaden and Anna are in school when the center opens.
All the food they prepare is homemade, and Takagi said they always try to cook the healthiest meals from scratch. They tend to make culturally diverse dishes since Takagi is Japanese, her husband is German, and her two children are American.
Cooking for CDCW’s guests and giving them the opportunity to enjoy a home-cooked meal has allowed the Schmidt-Kittler family to build personal connections with guests, which Kaden said is fulfilling. The support of these volunteers, Crouch said, also cultivates a broader sense of community.
“It gives a breath of young and new life to the center, to see young people so passionate and so focused on social justice,” she said. “It’s really just given us all so much hope.”
Newton-based assistance, however, is not limited to Takagi and her children’s contributions.
Newton Highlands Congregational Church
Director of Christian Education at Newton Highlands Congregational Church (NHCC), Wendy Donnell said the church has been involved with CDCW for a while and donates money to them. As a group, the church’s adults used to make sandwiches for CDCW after service. It was not until after COVID that Donnell invited the congregation’s children to start making the sandwiches instead.
Donnell said she made this decision because she wants to boost the children’s awareness of the unhoused population’s existence and struggles. She said children otherwise would not necessarily understand what it is like to experience insecurity in food or housing.
“I do what I can to get the kids to think a little bit outside the box, outside of themselves,” said Donnell.
Additionally, she hand-makes cards for the children to color and send with the sandwiches. The cards, she said, add a personal touch and let CDCW’s guests know they are independently important and not just another overlooked unhoused individual.
NHCC also supplies the center with fruits, snacks, and clothing collected from drives. Donnell said it is important for the church’s children to be involved in these activities because it is a hands-on way to create understanding and community.
Newton Presbyterian Church
Newton Presbyterian Church (NPC) also provides similar support to CDCW. Kathy Barnes, the church’s treasurer, clerk, and a member of its council — known as the session — said she proposed helping the center to NPC’s mission group.
“It’s horrifying that…in one of the richest states, in one of the richest suburbs, we have people that don’t have housing and food,” she said.
Once a month, after Sunday service, the church gets together and makes sandwiches for CDCW. Barnes and her family prepare a hot meal in addition to the sandwiches, which she delivers to the center. She said she stays there after delivery to serve meals by hand. The church also provides CDCW with individually packaged snacks, goody bags for holidays, and even treats for service animals.
Delivering the food and actively volunteering allows Barnes to get to know the center’s guests. However, assistance for CDCW is not simply an individual effort of hers. Through the church’s sandwich-making and donations, she said support for the center is now community-wide. All the donations provided to CDCW are separate from NPC’s budget; they come from the church’s members.
“If you’re giving money to something, it’s sort of impersonal. You’re not having a connection so much to the organization or to the people,” said Barnes. “But if you’re at the store and you pick up a cheese that is going to go into sandwiches, it’s personal. It’s concrete.”
Volunteer Nurses Kit Ryan and Jeannie Chaisson
Still, tangible contributions from the Newton community extend beyond supplying the center with food. Other efforts include medical assistance from registered nurses, like Kit Ryan and Jeannie Chaisson.
Ryan said that at CDCW, they often provide individuals with basic education regarding medications, the meaning of blood pressure values, and medical results. Being a registered nurse also allows her to sign off on guests’ paperwork for emergency aid, applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and other social safety net services.
Crouch said unhoused individuals tend to mistrust medical environments and have medical anxiety. However, thanks to Ryan and Chaisson’s volunteering efforts, she said the center’s guests have become more comfortable with medical workers.
“Unfortunately, when you’re working with unhoused people, a disproportionate amount of them do have chronic physical illnesses,” she said. “So having knowledge and insight on how to navigate these kinds of things has been insanely helpful.”
Ryan and Chaisson are members of the First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton, and this connection enables Ryan to get others involved. She emails congregation members every two weeks. Her updates include thanking individuals for their donations, guests’ medical statuses, and things the center may need, like Tylenol or socks. These emails “make it more real for people who are probably living extremely busy lives,” said Ryan.
CDCW Open House, November 21
Other members of the Newton community can show their support for CDCW by attending the center’s first open house on Thursday, November 21, from 6-8PM. Taking place at 16 Felton Street in Waltham, the open house will include a tour of the center’s facilities, refreshments, and blanket-making for CDCW’s guests.
With this open house, Crouch said she hopes attendees will learn more about the causes of homelessness and how it affects entire communities, not just individuals.
“I hope people see it as a community action, a community initiative to support their neighbors who need it,” she said.
Grace Yang is a Fig City News student reporter and a sophomore at Newton South High School.