Accotink in Action - Helping the Homeless

Accotink has an ongoing program of feeding dinner to the residents of the Eleanor Kennedy Shelter in Alexandria on a regular basis. After our first dinner served on November 15, 2011, we again served them on Cinco de Mayo Day, May 5, 2012 and on Saturday, Sept 22.

We will be hosting a hypothermia shelter for the homeless each night during the week of January 20 through 26, 2013. Many volunteers are needed to make this successful, so please help us help the homeless next January.

Our major social justice initiative for the 2010-2011 church year focused on homelessness, for which the Social Justice Committee received an award from the regional UUs for Social Justice. We became aware of the current homeless statistics in Fairfax County, learned what it’s like to be homeless, and interacted with, fed, and provided overnight shelter for some of the homeless population in our area. The events in this program included:

November 6 – Sunday worship service (10:00 am) to focus attention on the issue.

November 6 - Outreach collection to help Burke Area Families in Need.

November 11 – Friday night film “Kicking It” (7:30 pm) presents the Homeless World Cup Soccer Championship.

November 15 – Feed the Homeless at the Eleanor Kennedy Homeless Shelter (4:00 pm) in conjunction with National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week.

November 19 – Help the Homeless Walkathon in DC sponsored by Fannie Mae.

November 20 – Burke CROP Hunger Walk.

November thru March – Ongoing collection for Our Daily Bread, a local food bank, for which a member of our congregation has offered a $1500 matching grant.

December 12 – nUUners Program with Michele Krocker from the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance will speak about the current situation in Fairfax.

January 15 – Public Forum on Homelessness (2:00 pm) featuring speakers from the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Listen to a recording of the forum:

      Introduction (by Rev. Scott and Jessica Larsen)

      Speaker 1

      Speaker 2

      Unfortunately, the poor sound quality for speaker 3's presentation does not allow it to be posted.

January 5 to February 23 – Adult Ed Class “Living Homeless” 6 sessions on Thursday evenings (7:30 pm) based on the book Tell Them Who I Am; the Lives of Homeless Women by Elliot Liebow.

January 20 – Friday Night Film “American Refugees: Homelessness in 4 Movements” (7:30 pm)

March 4 – 10 – Operate a hypothermia shelter at AUUC for 7 nights (6:00 pm to 7:00 am), feeding the homeless dinner and breakfast plus providing a bag lunch. Many volunteers needed to prepare and serve meals, to drive vans, and to serve as monitors overnight.

For more information on these fantastic opportunities, or for general information on Accotink's excellent Social Justice Committee, please email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it