There is no grocery store in sight, no bank, no drug store. Just poverty.
A group of Emory nursing students who recently entered City of Refuge, the non-profit serving the needy on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard in Atlanta, will learn more than nursing here.
“I had a stigma of what someone who is homeless looks like,” said Robin Goodwin, a nursing student. “In my mind, I always think of someone who is dressed in 10 coats.”
The City of Refuge serves more than 10,000 people per year in one of the city’s most dilapidated neighborhoods just west of downtown. The agency’s services are wide-ranging: a health clinic, youth and adult classes, a women’s and children’s shelter, a day care center and a large dining hall where more than 19,000 free meals are served a month.
“A lot of what we do ends up being focused on the homeless because of the extreme need,” said Tony Johns, director of community involvement. “But all of [our services] are open to the people who are at risk or on a fixed income.”
The five Emory nurses are enrolled in the immersions learning class — off-campus first-hand experience — and comprise the second group of Emory students to come to City of Refuge this year. They work primarily in the HEALing Community Center, the clinic inside the City of Refuge which serves more than 500 patients a month. The most common illnesses in the neighborhood are HIV, mental health issues and hypertension, said Charles Moore, founder of the HEALing Community Center.
“All of this goes along with the level of poverty that is in this area,” he said.
For Goodwin, earning the trust of the patients has been the biggest hurdle.
“Before they are going to tell us anything about health issues, they have to trust us,” she said. “We really are strangers in a strange land.”
Elizabeth Cates, a student from Newnan, said any situation, even serving meals to the community, is an opportunity to ascertain health information.
“Nurses can provide assistance in ways that can be surprising,” she said.
The nurses’ education included knowing more about where their patients live. The nurses toured an apartment building that wasn’t up to code and could not accommodate tenants seeking Section 8 housing, said student Lauren Baldwin, of St Louis. The apartments rented for $475 a month and did not have smoke alarms, refrigerators or stoves. Student Caron Kelly, of Stone Mountain, said she could not believe these were considered desirable accommodations.
The complex is one of the few housing options for women who leave the shelter inside City of Refuge, Goodwin said.
Some community members’ main source of food is from the City of Refuge. The refuge , which was founded in 1997 in the Midtown Mission Church of God, is funded through donations. Corporate donors include Home Depot and the United Way.
“I never realized that there was such a great need [for] a meal,” Kelly said. “I never think of this as a country where someone had to line up for food.”
The partnership between Emory and the City of Refuge developed after one of the school’s students volunteered there in 2010 and urged school administrators to get involved. The nursing students, who work daily for six to eight hours, earn course credit. The clinic is staffed by doctors and nurses from around metro Atlanta.
Prior to the establishment of the HEALing Community Center in 2004, which has an annual budget of the $1.2 million, the City of Refuge did not offer a health clinic.
“By collaboration everyone gets stronger,” Moore said.
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