Readers respond on Survival Center

Published on August 25, 2006

To the Bulletin:

The brouhaha about the Survival Center is extremely upsetting, particularly as it seems to come from a few disgruntled clients and a number of over-zealous administrators.

That any citizen going there to make a donation need have any fear of rudeness or mistreatment seems to me utterly fantastic. I have never had anything but polite welcome from staff or clients when I have had occasion to bring anything.

The clients do not appear to me to be dissatisfied; they were devastated by the closing, even temporarily. A large mountain appears in the making over what likely began as a small anthill.

Roberta Morel
Amherst

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To the Bulletin:

I applaud the interest in improving the Survival Center. As a 20-year donor I value the opportunity to pass on what no longer fits in our family, whether it be kitchen supplies, bed linens or clothes.

As a psychiatric mental health nurse, I have worked in many similar facilities. I have to admit the Survival Center is the least inviting of all I have seen. Oh, the people have always been welcoming, but from my brief walk through the environment is, at best, disheartening. The clothes are so packed in that they no longer look appealing or accessible, the smell is unpleasant and the crowded chaos is uninviting.

The Survival Center is a community necessity. But you would think that living under the shadow of the best colleges and university in the country, we would have a showplace built on current wellness concepts and healthy environmental principles. In fact, maybe as a way to communicate a renewed effort, we should start with a name change so the aesthetic and the customers are not simply focusing on the now of surviving but rather on a vision for the future of hope and thriving.

Genevieve E. Chandler
Leverett

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To the Bulletin:

Recently the Survival Center has been on the carpet for its alleged failure to meet expectations. Abuse of clients, favoritism towards clients, discrimination against other clients, a worn and uninviting decor, unwelcoming attitudes, unfair trespass notices, and purloining of donations by volunteers and staff are part of the bill made public by the town's human rights director, among others.

My experience with the Center, however, is very different. In the entire six years of my once-a-week stint behind the front desk, I have never seen the kind of client abuse and theft of donations that the town officer and the newspapers have reported.

On the contrary, I have found the Center to be remarkably free of anger and rudeness of any kind. It is a place, in my admittedly limited view, where everyone is welcome, where good will and hard work abound in equal measure among staff and volunteers, though the conditions and space limitations are often anything but ideal.

Clearly, the barrage of complaints about the Center needs to be investigated. A consultant seems to be an excellent idea, along with the continuing and very welcome spruce-up of the Center's space. Assistant Director Diana Souza's recent efforts at outreach to members of the Amherst community who would find the Center's services useful but lack awareness of them also should be encouraged and continued.

Herschel S. Shohan
Amherst

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To the Bulletin:

I am a member of the Survival Center board of directors. I am also a low-income single parent and a consumer of the Survival Center.

I find the current climate of name-calling and finger-pointing very disturbing and the intrusive, one-sided investigations that have gone on totally inappropriate and counter-productive. The Survival Center provides an essential service to all who come seeking help, support, companionship and material goods. These services have been provided by dedicated staff, who are shamefully under-paid and over-worked, in a space that severely limits their ability to provide the privacy and quiet environment that would allow the staff to adequately address the needs of some of the consumers they serve.

In light of these constraints, I think it's time to take a step back and start to truly appreciate all that the Survival Center provides to our community and support the mission of the Center by working together to achieve the common goal of a Center that provides a place for everyone to be the best they can be and contribute in a way that is meaningful to the individual.

Evangeline Westcott has provided outstanding leadership from the earliest days at the Center and will continue to lead the staff and volunteers through this time of transition to ensure that this valuable community resource will be available to all who come to the Center for many years to come.

It is time for the critics to realize that the director has worked for many years at a salary that most would not or could not support a family on, and has consistently put in well over 40 hours a week to provide the behind-the-scenes work that has kept the Center running for the past 30 years. Let's show some support for a dedicated community servant.

Kathryn Perry
Amherst

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To the Bulletin:

Everyone has problems and they are simply a way of life. Problems can be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends how they are dealt with.

The Survival Center portrays itself in its mission statement as problem-solvers for life's hardships. The first step in this would be to show some understanding and that would lead to identifying the problem and then discussing it.

The Survival Center has done little in this effort to stay true to its mission, by the number of complaints by the people of the community. They need more stepping stones, not more stumbling blocks.

Katherine McKemmie
Amherst

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To the Bulletin:

At the Amherst Survival Center, receivers have the opportunity to become givers and givers receivers, in a cycle that is vastly different from the pattern at most human service agencies. At most agencies, middle-class 'givers' make the class differentiation quite clear as they 'assist' needy 'receivers.' At the Amherst Survival Center, even though successive boards have worked to raise salaries, it is usually needy people helping needy people.

Whereas at most human service agencies, those asking for assistance are asked to answer all manner of personal questions in response to the questions of an 'intake worker,' the Survival Center always prided itself that it welcomed newcomers by asking only 'How do you take your coffee?'

Of course, maintaining a safe and secure environment for the eclectic mix of people who come to the Survival Center makes it necessary to require some boundaries on the behavior of those who are there. Very occasionally, the director has found it necessary to ask someone not to return.

In recent years, the fading away of support from federal, state and local services has increased the numbers coming to the Center. Each bit of diminished services increases the needs and stress levels of the people who come to the Center for lunch, clothing or just to hang out with others. In turn, the demands and stresses on the staff at the Center increase.

I have no doubt that the pressures to do too much with too little in a very complex environment further diminished the organizational capacity to provide the important support that staff needed in order to maintain a uniformly calm and compassionate response to all that occurred at the Center.

It is vitally important that we band together as a community to support the Amherst Survival Center to be fully what it intends to be.

Rather than withholding our support because of the recent complaints, I ask that we work together to offer more support, volunteer and financial, to the Center, which, along with a few other services in our community, has represented the best of Amherst's caring attitude, something unique and very life-affirming amid the plethora of tight and soul-diminishing human services.

Judith Glaser
Amherst

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To the Bulletin:

It has been with sadness that I have been following your stories regarding the Survival Center.

I am a New Yorker of small means who has been visiting Amherst since 1991. Kind friends introduced me to the Survival Center. I've always been met there with friendliness and encouraged with my modest requests.

This time, especially, I was warmly welcomed by Collette, who did not know me, and while I had been hesitant about spending more time in Amherst, she helped dissolve my hesitancy. At 74, what I can carry and bring is limited, but she helped to bridge some needs.

I am very grateful to her, and the Survival Center, and truly hope the center survives and Collette's friendly presence will be there next time, when I hope to come again.

Marianne Landre
New York, N.Y.