Organizers said Thursday that volunteers are desperately needed for the warming center at First United Methodist Church's Cupp Family Life Center on Pratt Street.
Sally Carder, the shelter's organizer, said approximately four people are needed for each of the three-hour shifts.
"You can volunteer by going to St. Luke's Episcopal Church website," she said. "Right on the website, you will see a place that says warming shelter, and you can sign up right there.
"It's very easy to do. Some of our shifts we have full and more people wanting to sign up for that shift. There are other shifts that we don't have anybody signed up for. They're three-hour shifts, so they're not that (difficult)."
With Christmas Sunday and Hanukkah ending Monday night, Carder said she knows the difficulty for people to choose to volunteer at the shelter instead of spending time with their families.
"It's Christmas weekend," she said. "Everybody wants to be with their family. We sure understand that, surely do."
People interested in signing up for the shelter can visit https://bit.ly/WarmDec22.
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Carder said the shelter needs at least two or three people at night, but people are always welcome to help out at meal times.
"During the meal time, we can always use people," she said. "We help serve the meals. We help prepare them. We clean up. We try to clean up ... the gym."
While slots to volunteer were still available at presstime, Carder said the Hot Springs community is extremely giving.
"Our community is absolutely wonderful," she said. "All we have to do is to put a need out there, and the next thing we know, it's filled. I appreciate the heart of all of our residents, all of our people who say, 'We want to help in some way.'"
A room in the family life center that is being used for staging for the shelter was full of food, drinks, blankets and clothing, but Carder said the items will likely be used up quickly.
"The majority of this is blankets," she said. "We have sodas, and we had a food bank that donated lots of potatoes. So we're gonna have a baked potato night. We will go through everything that's back here very quickly, very quickly.
"And once we take stock of what we need, we'll get the needs list out on Facebook and on our churches' websites. We'll do that so that everyone can see what we need."
While Carder did not give an estimate on how many people might utilize the shelter, she said she has already heard from hospitals about the need.
"We've already had a call from the hospital," she said. "Usually on nights like that, our homeless folks will go there to try to get warm and sit in the emergency room, and they will be bringing them down to us. The police department is aware of this, so they'll be bringing us people probably all night long."
Carder said gift cards to Walmart in any amount are welcome, so volunteers can pick up any items that are needed immediately.
"If somebody will get a Walmart card -- if they want to put $50 on it, if they want to put $100 on it -- that's great because then when we have an immediate need, we can hand that card to one of our volunteers and say, 'Hey, would you run down to Walmart and get this for us? And that works really well,'" she said.
"Another thing that we're trying to do is to collect $5 (McDonald's) cards because we want Santa Claus to give those to our homeless neighbors on Christmas morning. That's a meal and a hot cup of coffee right there, and so we would certainly appreciate anything like that."
A number of students from area high schools were either on-hand or scheduled to volunteer through the Young Men of Distinction program, Carder said.
"Young Men of Distinction is a program that actually spans across all of our high schools, and all we have to do is make a phone call," she said Thursday morning. "We've got some this morning.
"We've got others coming in this afternoon to help cook, but these young men are volunteering. Right now they're helping to set up cots, they're helping to set up our entire resource area, and man, we appreciate that so much."
Carder said the desire for the warming shelter is to deter the loss of life due to freezing temperatures.
"Our main goal is to save lives," she said. "In 2018, we had one of our homeless neighbors that we loved freeze to death, and that was in temperatures that were just barely freezing. But he died on a bench at Spencer's Corner. And that's a terrible thing to go through to think that happened. So right now, we're trying to save lives."
Sally Carder displays some of the items available at the warming shelter. The shelter will remain open until Monday at 10 a.m. - Photo by Lance Porter of The Sentinel-Record