01/09/2026
🧡🌙 🙏 And that's a wrap on The Welcome Place Night Shelter for 2026...
As we closed the doors last night on our final shift of this year's winter shelter, we're feeling enormously grateful for what our community has made possible.
Night after night, through some bitterly cold and very wet winter weather, The Welcome Place has offered people experiencing homelessness somewhere warm, safe and welcoming to spend the night.
But a shelter doesn't simply appear when the doors open each evening.
It takes an extraordinary number of people doing an extraordinary number of things - some very visible, and many happening quietly behind the scenes.
So, as we finish for the year, we'd like to say a heartfelt THANK YOU to:
🧡 Our guests, for placing their trust in us and being part of The Welcome Place community.
🧡 Our organisation leader, Kate, for her passion and commitment to making this happen.
🧡 Our committee, volunteers and shift leaders, who gave their evenings, nights and mornings to make the shelter possible.
🧡 Our laundry helpers, who somehow kept clean bedding circulating night after night.
🧡 Our behind-the-scenes logistics crews, moving equipment between venues, collecting donations and making sure the things we needed somehow ended up where they needed to be.
🧡 Our church leaders, staff and congregations, who opened their buildings to us throughout winter and shared their spaces so generously.
🧡 The businesses, organisations and Benalla Rural City Council who supported the shelter with goods, services, spaces, resources and practical assistance.
🧡Our sister shelter Wang Night Shelter, for support and inspiration, as well as their own incredible work in their community.
🧡 Our broader Benalla and district community, whose donations, generosity and willingness to help have sustained us throughout the season.
🧡 Everyone who has followed, shared and supported us online, helping our requests reach the people who could answer them and spreading the word about homelessness in our community.
And finally, thank you to every person doing one of the hundred little jobs we haven't managed to name here. Services like ours depend just as much on the quiet work nobody sees.
The Welcome Place may have finished for this winter, but homelessness hasn't.
We know the cold and wet weather doesn't disappear because our shelter season has ended, and neither does the need for safe, secure housing. A volunteer-run winter shelter can only ever be one part of a much bigger response.
For now, though, we want to pause and recognise something pretty special:
Our community saw a need - and hundreds of people, in all sorts of different ways, helped answer it.
Thank you, Benalla. 🧡🌙🙏
P.S. Feeling inspired? If you think you might like to be part of The Welcome Place when we return next winter, you can register your interest as a volunteer anytime here:
https://bit.ly/4gw4pHi
No commitment needed now - it just means we can get in touch when we're preparing for the 2027 season. 🧡
![🧡 The SECOND LAST Welcome Place Night Shelter FOR THE YEAR is open tonight from 5:45pm[please note revised time]at Holy ...](https://img5.ngos1.com/635/926/122215205906359261.jpg)
