Alongside its food pantry and ministry, Mount Olive Baptist Church — set in downtown Plant City off W. Ball Street — opened a new showering and bathing service for the community’s homeless and needy.
Donna White, a coordinator for the service and a church member, said the idea came from recognizing a lack of accessible services in the area.
After pitching the idea to the church board, White researched portable shower services in the area and came across the Tampa-based nonprofit ShowerUp, which offers hygiene services to the homeless and needy from Clearwater to Lakeland.
Following her research, White reached out to the charity over the summer to coordinate dates and times to offer the service to the Plant City community.
Now, after its initial debut on Sept. 22, the Mount Olive Baptist Church and ShowerUp have a schedule set for the fourth Tuesday of each month from 9:45 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Updated schedules can also be found on the ShowerUp website if times are changed or adjusted.
“We know that there is a need, but getting the people to us can be a challenge,” White said. “With the feeding ministry, we have people that will come, but whether or not they want to take a shower is really based on them and their needs.”
Additionally, White said the church also gathered donations from church members and the surrounding community for personal toiletries, towels, and gently used clothing for the event, and will continue offering and collecting donations for the needy.
“The response from the community has been astronomical, just phenomenal,” White said. “So, it is something that people want to see, and the success of it is just going to be us navigating through this and seeing the timing, the place, the location, and how people will respond in coming days and times.”
White said three people showed up for the launch of the service, showing there is an interested community they can build on with time.
“We really only had about three people, and only one that was willing to take a shower,” she said. “That’s the kind of basis to what’s going on, and what we’re proposing to do is build this on a monthly basis so that the population that’s in need will have a place to come.”
Dali Vargas, the operations manager for ShowerUp, said the process took about three months to fully flesh out.
She added that White’s request came at a perfect time, as ShowerUp had just moved out of Plant City after a six-month stay because the previous site was closed and demolished.
“When she reached out, it was actually like an answered prayer, because I know the Plant City area doesn’t have a lot of resources and I know that there’s a larger unhoused population that doesn’t get served as much,” Vargas said. “So, when she reached out, I was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’”
Vargas said consistency in the service will establish a base for it in Plant City, which she hopes will translate into a larger impact of change through awareness and accessibility.
“It starts with one, and if we can grow this to 15 to 25 people, that’s 15 to 25 people that are in this area that are getting the services that other areas get,” Vargas said. “The goal is just being able to have housing access and things like that, so my hope is that there’ll be an awareness that there’s a population out there.”
