soul and reciprocity-focused community care at the intersection of homelessness, substance use and mental health.
Companionship Training
Our foundational training, the Way of Companionship refers to a particular model of social action based on the work of Reverend Craig Rennebohm.
Briefly, the Companionship model trains and empowers people to establish and maintain ongoing supportive relationships with those living in crisis. These relationships can provide assistance of a practical nature, such as helping a job-seeker develop a resume, or sitting with someone as they call their mom for the first time in 5 years, but more importantly they provide emotional connection and confer dignity, autonomy and acceptance to people who are alienated from much of society. We have repeatedly seen the deployment of this model transform lives for the better. We believe that training and deploying a (holy) cadre of companions to support out unhoused neighbors will measurably reduce the burden of homelessness first at an individual level and ultimately in a broader context.
This training is offered regularly around the King County area and is often sought out by religious communities desiring to grow awareness, compassion and impact. '
Contact us to attend an upcoming training or request one for your community or group.
We do request a donation of $300-$500 per training please. But we will not turn away a community that is desiring this training due to financial constraints. Please reach out and schedule your training now!
Circles of Care & Chaplains of Presence
The journey to secure housing is laborious and complex. Once someone does move indoors, a host of other challenges arise: some people haven’t lived inside in years, walls can feel claustrophobic, and now they are isolated from a community on the street that often felt like family, however messy it may be.
Through Circles of Care we train, mobilize and equip groups from local faith communities to fill gaps of care for neighbors who transition from the street and into housing, particularly combating the isolation and overwhelm that often leads people back to the street or tragically, to overdose.
Sacred Streets accompanies Circles on their journey to offer support, education opportunities and encouragement throughout the life cycle of their commitment.
Curious about forming Circles of Care within your congregation or organization? Reach out here.
With homelessness at an all-time high and understaffed NGO’s causing service providers to experience a high rate of turnover and burnout, we believe faith communities are uniquely suited to offer a depth of care and companionship to our neighbors on the street that can only come from embodied presence.
Chaplains of presence are neighborhood based and offer “rounds” at various locations of our partner organizations. We focus on caring for those who are the most vulnerable and hardest to reach in our communities. This means sitting with people in their suffering and acknowledging their attempts to make meaning and find relief. This also means greeting their inherent dignity and particularity in every encounter, offering active listening, love, care and accompaniment. The only agenda for these encounters is to call attention, reflect back and be an empathetic witness who holds, along with them, their own hopes for flourishing.
Circles of Care and Chaplains of Presence are opportunities to embody what people have learned from our Companionship Training. People must complete this initial training before signing up for either of these practices in companionship and loving care.
Please reach out to Sparrow with any questions : sparrow@oursacredstreets.com
Soul and Grief Tending
We provide spiritual care, grief support and chaplaincy to community members that live on the margins of our society, are victims or perpetrators of a crime, and/or anyone who does not have this constellation of care and kindness available to them.
Some examples of how we animate this care:
-Post Overdose Blessing Bags
-Planning and Leading Memorial Services at Program locations for individuals who have died while homeless or residing in a supportive housing unit.
- Hospital Visitations
-Grief Support for those who have lost someone they love to an overdose
-Grief support and spiritual care for service providers
-Care for victims of a crime
To help Sacred Streets with this work, we are bringing together ecumenical leaders from across our counties, training, equipping and supporting them, so that they can be available to help us respond to the particular spiritual care, grief support and meaning making needs that emerge from the hearts of the people within our communities.
If you are a faith leader interested in joining this work, please reach out to sparrow@oursacredstreets.com
Partnering
We partner with Homeless service providers and critically adjacent systems, to bouy and nourish their people and programs.
Current Service Provider partners include: King County Medical Examiners Office, Seattle Fire Department’s Post Overdose Response Team, Low Income Housing Institute, Aurora Commons, Downtown Emergency Service Center
If you are a service provider who would like support, please reach out to us!
We partner with Faith Communities, training them in the way of Companionship, and then connecting them to a local service provider to extend much needed community care and contextualized support.
Current faith partners include: Bethany Community Church and Awake Church
Partnerships are for faith communities who would like to take their work Sacred Streets a step further, cementing continual trainings, support and guidance throughout the year, as well as connecting you with a local provider. See graphic below:
Beauty, Bridging, Belonging & Moral Imaginings
Writing, Teaching, Consulting and any mode of connecting and creating…Sparrow is available to work alongside you and your community.
Please reach out!
original art by Minah Kim Bass
Original Artwork by Kinsey Aleksi, Created for the book, “Her Rites” by Christy Angelle Bauman, PHD