Volunteer Spotlight: Tobie Smith

Quote: “It gives us volunteers a chance to break down barriers to communicate with community members we may not normally interact with, breaking down biases and understanding that everyone rightly deserves to enjoy all that our wonderful Capitol Hill community offers.”

Dr. Tobie Smith is one of our longest serving and most active volunteers with Everyone Home DC’s Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART). She brings an incredible amount of knowledge, experience, and passion to this work because, when she is not volunteering with HART, she serves as the Medical Director at Health Care for the Homeless, Baltimore County. We are so grateful that Tobie chooses to spend her time outside of work with Everyone Home DC and are excited to highlight her work with our team!

Everyone Home DC’s HART volunteers are an extension of our Street Outreach Team. We train members of the community to check in on our unhoused neighbors at night, offer them snacks and shelter on hypothermia alert nights, and in extreme circumstances, call for emergency services.

Tobie became a HART volunteer because she realized that, while she is very active in homeless services in Baltimore, she wasn’t engaged in issues related to homelessness in her own community here in DC. Tobie’s professional background makes her an extra special HART volunteer. While out on shift, she is able to flag common health conditions for our outreach staff who are then able to follow-up and ensure our homeless neighbors receive the care they need.

For Tobie, one of the highlights of volunteering with Everyone Home DC is the “opportunity to work with other volunteers who are learning about homelessness.” Volunteering with HART also helps her to “better address the concerns of the rest of our community and to know how to encourage others to advocate and alleviate the issues facing the homeless population.”