The Riverton Peace Mission donated $5,000 to the Riverton Rescue Mission this week to help start a shelter for the unhoused in town.
The Rescue Mission needs to raise $25,000 before the shelter can open, organizers told the Commissioners this month.
“Let’s demonstrate that we want our unhoused neighbors, mostly Indigenous people, to have a welcoming place to go,” the press release says.
The shelter effort is an outcome of the Peace Mission’s Summit for Our Unhoused Neighbors that drew more than 100 people together this spring to talk about “local needs in Fremont County,” the press release says.
The “need for a shelter in Riverton was identified” during the summit, organizers said, and “a task force was created, leading to the creation of the Riverton Rescue Mission.”
Now, Peace Mission board member Nicole Wagon said “we wanted to show that what we started we want to continue to support.”
So far, the Rescue Mission has raised almost $7,000 towards its $25,000 goal, organizers said.
Once the goal is reached, demonstrating “that we are serious about wanting a shelter in Riverton,” the Riverton Rescue Mission will work with the Wyoming Rescue Mission to develop a “come as you are” shelter with the goal of “no more deaths from hypothermia and for the guests to be safe, to find jobs and to heal.”
Donations toward the shelter effort can be made to the Wyoming Rescue Mission or the Riverton Peace Mission at P.O. Box 255, Riverton, WY, 82501.
Checks should have “Riverton Shelter” on the memo line.