S.H.A.R.E. Community Brings Radical Hospitality® to Antioch, CA
July 23, 2020
Photo by SHARE Community
LavaMaeˣ works with S.H.A.R.E. Community to help bring mobile showers to serve its unhoused neighbors in Antioch, CA
The Backstory: How S.H.A.R.E. Community Got Started
For Ricka Davis-Sheard—Founder & Managing Director of S.H.A.R.E—serving those in need started when her sister began to struggle with mental illness and substance abuse at a young age, having to help her with re-entry programs and becoming something like a social worker herself. Through this journey, Ricka soon began to see her unhoused neighbors more and more and learned that showers were most in need.
“It’s really important to our guests that the community begins to see them as they are: sisters, mothers, brothers, daughters and also allow the community to realize what privacy and safety means to people,” says Ricka. “And it’s my goal to get the community to a place where they are realizing that these people are their people; they’re our neighbors.”
S.H.A.R.E. Community launched at its first shower location on September 29th, 2020, in Antioch, CA, and hopes to change the community’s mindset and stigmas attached to being unhoused.
Delivering Radical Hospitality Through SHARE
Radical Hospitality, LavaMaeˣ’s philosophy of meeting people wherever they are and bringing an extraordinary level of care, is a part of everything S.H.A.R.E. Community does. It’s allowed S.H.A.R.E to take its service to new heights—where its guests can feel genuine love and care who want to come to take a shower. Often, some service providers treat our most vulnerable like another number, undeserving of privacy, personal choice or respect.
“People say they’ve heard about us from others on the streets, and wouldn’t come at first,” says Ricka, “but once they found out how we treat our guests, the word on the street spread, and our shower numbers have increased. People are more open to using other services after talking with us and using our service, and become encouraged to move onto next steps after being with us; such as getting housing and work.”
The SHARE Community in Action
S.H.A.R.E.’s mobile shower trailer has two stalls, and the program delivers hygiene essentials along with clothing for its guests. An important part of its program is providing a personal hygiene kit experience to establish relationships with guests, providing choice. Alongside the showers, S.H.A.R.E. brings other partners to provide haircuts and other critical resources.
At the time of this writing, S.H.A.R.E. provided 10-20 showers every service day with a staff of four people, including two to four regular volunteers. Their goal is to work up to a five-day weekly service schedule.
How LavaMaeˣ Helped
Annie Stickel, a mobile hygiene consultant for LavaMaeˣ, worked with Ricka and the team to help launch the program. Annie helped guide S.H.A.R.E. through setting up a site location, providing Radical Hospitality training, partnership development, donation solicitation strategy, and the permission to be their authentic selves.
“Annie has been there for the big and the small,” says Ricka. “I am so grateful for Annie and for LavaMaeˣ because our communities deserve it; they deserve what we do.”
Keys To Success
Ricka would tell others looking to do this work to ”take all the advice given by LavaMaeˣ rather than attempting to start from scratch. They should take the bulk of LavaMaeˣ’s expertise and customize it because everything LavaMaeˣ provides is intentionally designed to build a foundation, but still allows room to make one’s program their own.”
