Think and Act Anew

Transforming Services from Overhead to Income

For generations, immigrants and refugees have arrived on America’s shores--or more recently airports--bringing their talents and seeking opportunities to build better lives through education and hard work. From their entry points, they migrated to settle communities all over the country. (You can see immigration patterns in the U.S. since 1880 on this interactive map.)

Catholic Charities agencies provide assistance to these populations, including one of the most critical services needed--translation. Immigrants and refugees need help to navigate the legal system, describe symptoms to doctors, understand school newsletters and report cards, and more.

Photo source

As you might expect, operating translation programs can be costly. One of our agencies, Catholic Charities of Fort Worth, Texas (CCFW), took a fresh look at its program after public funding ran out...and saw an opportunity to turn it into a social enterprise.

For more than a decade, Forth Worth has been the fastest growing large city in America, welcoming many new families from Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, among others.

In 1999, CCFW received funding from the Texas Department of Health to improve language access--and thus access to social and health services--for refugees and immigrants. CCFW established the Translation & Interpretation Network (TIN) to provide professional interpretation services to institutions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, like schools and hospitals, that served non-English-speaking populations. The program was supported initially by government funding and nominal fees paid by the organizations using the program. When the government program ended in 2005, CCFW covered the remaining expenses.

In 2007, CCFW decided that since TIN’s clients were institutions, and not directly those in need, it would be possible and appropriate to convert the program into a for-profit venture, freeing the organization’s funds to address the needs of individuals. In 2008, TIN transformed into a social business, generating income through fees that average $55 to $80/hour for interpreters, translators, and related services.

From its first day as a business, TIN has been self-supporting and profitable; 100% of its profits are turned back to CCFW, effectively transforming the program from a cost center to a revenue generator. The enterprise has grown 25% to 30% each year, expanded its market beyond the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and developed new product offerings like web-based delivery systems, consulting, professional development, and training.

Today, more than 200 trained and certified translators and interpreters offer high quality language services in more than 50 languages. They include Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese, as well as many rare languages from smaller nations, like Khmer, Lingala, and Pashto.

Although now a for-profit business, TIN has not lost sight of its social mission and remains a program of CCFW.

Through TIN, bilingual refugees can secure highly paid part-time employment to supplement their incomes. It allows women with children, those with full-time jobs, and students to achieve greater self-sufficiency. In addition, TIN provides education and development opportunities for its interpreters that can enable them to run their own small businesses. And it provides a small income stream to CCFW.

The poor may always be with us (cf. Mt 26:11), but that doesn’t mean they must remain poor. While programs like TIN do not replace charity and almsgiving, they create sustainable ways for us to ensure that every person has “all that is necessary for living a genuinely human life,” including food, clothing, housing, and productive work. The Translation & Interpretation Network is an excellent example of what I mean when I say we need to “think and act anew” about how we serve the poor in America.

Are there services or programs in your community that could be converted into social businesses? Post your ideas here, or join the conversation on our Facebook page.

Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job

It began as a jobs program that provided an alternative to gang affiliation for young people.   In 1992, a bakery was opened in a run-down warehouse. A tortilla stand in the downtown market was next.  Before long Homeboy Industries was born. 

Fr. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest, has spent more than two decades advocating for at-risk and gang-related youth, which he experienced first-hand as pastor of a parish in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. 

While there is no definitive reason why kids want to join gangs, the National Center for Victims of Crime cites poverty, lack of economic opportunity, a sense of belonging, and fast money among the contributors.  More than one-third of California’s poor live in Los Angeles County, which also has high levels of high school dropout rates.

The FBI estimates "there are approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and OMG [motorcycle] gang members comprising more than 33,000 gangs in the United States.” Gang membership has increased by a 40 percent since 2009. According to its 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, gangs are migrating from traditional urban bases to the suburbs and rural communities; gang members who return to the community from prison have an adverse and lasting impact on these neighborhoods.  Homeboy Industries was established to create an environment that provided training, work experience, and, importantly, the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side baking bread, learning to silkscreen, developing retail skills, or running a restaurant and catering business.  Training has expanded to include employable skills like solar panel installation. 

The success of Homeboy Bakery created the groundwork for additional businesses. Today, Homeboy Industries’ nonprofit enterprises include Homeboy Bakery, Homeboy Silkscreen, Homeboy/Homegirl Merchandise, and Homegirl Café.

Homeboy Industries helps about 12,000 and employs 300 former gang members each year.  As its mission statement reads, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

Homeboy Industries is a striking example of the Great Commandment: Love Your Neighbor. And love might be the most significant tool in Homeboy’s toolbox.

In an NPR interview, a former juvenile offender said:

I remember the first time [Fr. Greg] ever told me he loved me...To me, it was, like, uncomfortable because I'm here looking at him like, 'Man, how's this white man gonna tell me he loves me when not even my own mom tells me that.' But he just started showing me how to love, how to be loved.

Homeboys has inspired at least 15 other communities to form similar initiatives.  Former gang members who have been through the Homeboys program are working with at-risk youth in Pritchard, Alabama. This video shows how even those from East L.A. are shocked by the poverty and despair there.    

From one person’s determination to see these kids as human beings and to offer love, compassion, and kinship, the cycle of gang violence in urban and rural communities is slowly being broken.  As Fr. Greg says:

It’s all about kinship, it’s all about connection, it’s all about linking ourselves to each other and staying committed to the truth that we belong to each other.  And then you discover that’s really powerful in the world. That no bullet can pierce it. 

The Homeboy program not only offers an alternative to the streets and wraparound services, it has created businesses and jobs that are transforming the landscapes of some pretty tough neighborhoods. That’s what I call thinking and acting anew.

We were pleased to have Fr. Greg conduct a workshop at Catholic Charities’ Centennial Gathering in 2010. The program, “Being a Gospel People Today,” which he led with Diocesan Director Laura Cassell of Rockville Centre, addressed one of the greatest challenges we face today—remaining faithful to the Gospel in our work and in our lives.

Winning the Real Hunger Games

When I heard there was a movie called “The Hunger Games” I thought I was hearing an April Fool’s joke.  Those of us at Catholic Charities and thousands of churches and community groups around the country have seen far too many people who come to us because they are hungry. It’s no game for them. And yet I read that “The Hunger Games” just topped the box office for the fourth week in a row, bringing in an estimated $337.1 million in the US and another $500 million worldwide.

Now I have no problem with the movies. The motion picture and video industry employs more than 350,000 people in America, with pay ranging from above minimum wage to figures most of us can only dream about.

But when I hear the word “hunger” I don’t think of movies or games, but of a child going to bed hungry. The report Household Food Security in the United States in 2010 (issued in 2011) estimated that 17.2 million households had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of money or other resources. Considering that the average size of a household is 2.5 persons, the number of Americans who can’t count on having enough food for an active, healthy life is just about equivalent to the entire population of Canada.

For years Catholic Charities and many other organizations have stepped into this space with emergency food supplies and community kitchens. But the Great Recession has dealt these programs a double whammy:  contributions have been lower because donors are themselves strained financially, while those seeking food assistance have multiplied and include many who never imagined they would need to turn to a bread line or a food pantry for their sustenance.

HUNGER GAMES?

The hunger games we know are more like juggling increased demand with fewer resources and racing to fill pantry bags before the doors open. Three Catholic Charities agencies alone reported turning away at least 1,750 individuals that came to them seeking food in the 4^th quarter of last year. 

We don’t live in the post-apocalyptic world of “The Hunger Games.” And the hunger of our neighbors, those who are poor and vulnerable, is not a game.  We believe in creating a “circle of protection” around resources that serve those in greatest need, like WIC and SNAP.  As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recently wrote in a letter to Congress, “The moral measure of the agriculture appropriations process is how it serves ‘the least of these.’ We urge you to protect and fund programs that feed hungry people, help the most vulnerable farmers, strengthen rural communities and promote good stewardship of God’s creation. “

This is the hunger game worth fighting - and winning. Are you ready?

An Easter Reflection on Luke

One of the most well-known Resurrection passages in the Gospels is Luke’s depiction of the disciples on their way to the village of Emmaus, some seven miles from Jerusalem, on the evening of that first Resurrection Day.  They are discouraged, confused and aimless as they recount to this unknown companion all the staggering events of the last few days. 

Along the way Jesus opens the meaning of the Scriptures for them and then performs a ritual that has become familiar to believers throughout the centuries: he prays a blessing and breaks bread with them.  Only then are their eyes opened.  Only then do they understand the reality of the Resurrection and the fact that Jesus will always be with us till the end of time.

Luke’s account is meant not to relate the happy ending of a troublesome event.  It is meant to give believers of every generation reassurance that we have not been abandoned but continue to experience the presence of Jesus in new and wonderful ways.

There is another depiction of the presence of Jesus that this brings to mind.  It is a woodcut by the artist Fritz Eichenburg called Christ of the Breadlines.  There among those waiting in a Depression era-like line is the figure of Jesus Christ.  The revelation here is that Jesus truly hides in the need of others.

How fortunate we are to recognize Jesus in the words of Sacred Scripture and especially in the sacramental presence of our rituals dating back to the Last Supper.  How fortunate also we are as people privileged to be entrusted to work in the social mission of the Gospel to recognize the presence of Christ in all of those who come to our doors for help and encouragement. 

Dom Helder Camara, a great Brazilian Archbishop (1909-1999), writes of an instance while he was reflecting on this particular passage of Luke’s Gospel when there was a knock on the door.  It was a poor man.  He quickly gave him a little cash to get rid of him so that he could go back to his rich meditation.  But no sooner had he sat back down when he realized that he had just dismissed the person of Christ hiding in the needs of this poor man in order to get back to his own thoughts.

This Easter may we be blessed with a truly renewed faith in the presence of Christ in our midst.  May we be blessed with the eyes of faith to recognize the many and wonderful ways that he makes himself know to us.  And may we renew our commitment to serve those in need with reverence and awe as we continue our own journey to Emmaus.

Do as I Have Done for You

Do as I Have Done for You

In the Middle East of Jesus’s time, shoes were rare.  Sandals were the norm, or even bare feet. It was a warm climate, and dry. No need for the layers of socks and shoes and boots that we wear in the northern climate of the United States.

In the Gospel of John, we encounter a familiar scene: Jesus and his disciples at dinner. But this story has a twist. Jesus “rose from supper and took off his outer garments. He took a towel and tied it around his waist.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel around his waist.” It was not what you would expect. Peter protested. “You will never wash my feet.” The teacher washing the feet of his followers?  That was unheard of! It was what we might call today “a teachable moment.”  So Jesus said: “As I have done for you, you should also do.”

So in those days of dusty, dirty feet it was a sign of hospitality for a host to offer his or her guests some water and a servant to wash their feet before entering the house proper.

His disciples must learn to wash one another’s feet. Learn to serve others, including--especially-- those they thought should serve them.

It was a revolutionary idea at the time. It’s still a revolutionary idea. How many times have we been impatient with a waiter at a restaurant because service was slow? Or with the cashier at the supermarket? Do we even see the person who cleans our office, or are they just a figure in the shadows? 

This evening, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the Mandatum, as the ceremony of washing another’s feet is called, will be re-enacted. We are reminded that as disciples of Christ we are called to humility and service today, just as the twelve were called two millennia ago.

We don’t have many opportunities to wash other people’s feet these days, but we can understand that no act of service to another is beneath us. If we put service to others before our own desires in our personal, business, and civic lives, imagine how the world might change.

How would Jesus teach this lesson in today’s world? It’s worthy of reflection over the next few days as we contemplate and celebrate the Paschal mystery.

A Mustard Seed Grows in Detroit

A few weeks ago, as we entered the season of Lent, I wrote a blog post about the Poverty Top 40, citing a list of the 40 U.S. cities with the highest poverty rates.

At the top of that list was Detroit.

In the 1950s, Detroit was the 4th largest city in the United States, the capital of America’s automotive industry and birthplace of soul music. Over the years it was nicknamed Motor City and Motown.  For various reasons, the city declined, and today it is the nation’s poverty leader.

Behind the scenes of that headline, though, the once great city is undergoing a sort of renaissance. And it started with a simple seed. From a barren landscape of abandoned buildings and empty lots, residents began to plant community gardens to address the “food desert” issue, but also to build community as the gardening tasks are shared by neighbors.  The Greening of Detroit, a nonprofit organization, estimates that today there may be upwards of 1,300 community gardens in the city, tended by 15,000 gardeners, and supported by more than a dozen nonprofits. The group’s Garden Resource Program reports an astounding level of community participation:

In 2011, residents were responsible for creating and maintaining 1,351 vegetable gardens in the city. As participants in the Garden Resource Program, these gardeners picked up 49,858 seed packs and 230,296 transplants and grew over 73 varieties of fruits and vegetables in their 382 community, 48 market, 64 school and 857 family gardens.

Artists and young people from around the country are migrating to Detroit, creating a vast laboratory for innovative thinking about how the city could be rebuilt, not as its old self but as a new model that embraces the future.  One documentary, “The Farmer and the Philosopher,”  looks at Detroit through the eyes of two very different people who are helping change the city for the better in different ways: Toby Barlow, a writer who lives in downtown Detroit, and Mark Covington, founder of Georgia Street Community Garden.  I encourage you to watch it.




During his ministry, our Lord often spoke to his followers in parables. When I think of what is happening in Detroit, I think of the parable of the mustard seed.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32)

We are reminded that whether we are sowing seeds to grow plants or seeds for ideas, both are powerful and can bring about great change. Each of us has the power to initiate change, as the citizens of Detroit are doing.  It’s something to think about as we near the end of our Lenten journey in that most powerful of all gardens, the Garden of Gethsemane.  What seed are you planting?

 

The Power of One (x 600): Building a Community Store

When Pope Benedict XVI issued Caritas in Veritate in 2009, the world was still reverberating from the bank failures and global economic crisis that followed.  His message was timely, and a piercing assessment of the personal and social, as well as economic, missteps that led to the crisis.  But he was also prescriptive, laying out a course of thought and action that would lead to a stronger, better world.

The Holy Father emphasized the need for new business models that consider not only management and shareholder, but “other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference." (Caritas in Veritate, 40)

I thought of Caritas in Veritate when I read about The Community Store in Saranac Lake. 

 
[Link to slideshow on New York Times website: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/11/13/business/20111113-store.html]

Saranac Lake, New York, is a small town nestled in the mountains of the Adirondacks.   The local department store went out of business in 2002 after its parent company filed for bankruptcy. Since then the residents have had to drive 50 miles to get the basics of daily life. While internet shopping partially fills the gap there are items like socks and t-shirts and sweaters that are preferably purchased in person.  Plus there is the strengthening of community that the residents get by shopping in person.

So the residents of Saranac decided to open their own department store. They began raising funds by selling shares, $100 each, and five years later reached their $500,000 goal. Around 600 residents were investors. Last October, the Saranac Lake Community Store opened its doors to the public.  As its website says, the store is a place where you can “meet a neighbor down the street,” where you are “greeted with a friendly smile and a warm hello.”

In a letter to the editor of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, a Saranac resident explains why the store deserves support:

This year, I'll be writing another [check] for the Community Store - not because it will save women walking miles to get water, or because it will protect unique ecosystems in South America, but because it will save someone right here in my Saranac Lake family the cost of a tank of gas or the trip in a car, someone who can't afford any extra miles.

When there is so much that the world needs, is our Community Store really so important? Yes! I know too many people living right here who are poorer this year than they were last, who are practicing household economies that they never dreamed of before now. By bringing the Community Store to Saranac Lake, I can help them while helping myself.

The Saranac community is a recent example of “community stores,” a business model that reflects what the Holy Father is talking about. It’s about more than shareholder profits. It’s committed to its community because it is the community.

One group estimates there are around 300 community stores in the U.S. today, serving small and medium-sized communities.  But community enterprises don’t have to be small. The Green Bay Packers has been a publicly owned, nonprofit corporation since 1923. Today, 4,750,937 shares are owned by 112,158 stockholders--the team’s fans.

I have written before about the power that one person has to create change. The Saranac story multiplies that by 600. It tells us there are no limits to the possibilities born out of working together for the common good.

What are your ideas? How can we use this model to help those who are poor? Would this model work in your community?

 

 

40 Days, 40 Cities

This week we begin our observance of Lent, the 40 days leading up to the celebration of Easter and the Paschal mystery. The number 40 is used repeatedly in Scripture. There is the story of Noah and the great flood, where it rains for 40 days and 40 nights (Gn 7:4,12,17; 8:6).  Moses stayed with God on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Ex 24:18). The Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years before entering the Promised Land (Nm 14:34). Jesus fasts in the desert for 40 days and nights before beginning his public ministry (Mk1:12-15); his ascension into heaven occurs 40 days after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3).

So I was struck by a chart heading I saw in The New York Times last weekend: Motown No. 1 on the Poverty Top 40. Under that headline was a list of the 40 cities of more than 250,000 with the highest poverty rates.  Detroit’s poverty rate topped the list at 37.6 percent. The 40th place - a four-way tie among Greensboro, NC, Corpus Christi, TX, New York, NY, and Tulsa, OK -- had a poverty rate of 20.1 percent.  No region escaped the list, a clear, tragic demonstration of how widespread poverty is in America. 

Given the coincidence of this list of 40 cities with the advent of the 40 days of Lent I thought we might “think and act anew” about our Lenten observance. As we reflect on the meaning of our baptism let’s include these “neighbors” in our thoughts and actions.   Here are some ideas:

1. St. Augustine said, “True prayer is nothing but love.” Say a special prayer for the people of each city, one per day for 40 days.  Contemplate how our actions as individuals and as society resulted in poverty in each city.

2. “Adopt” a city and support one of its food banks, so those who are poor do not go hungry.

3. Contribute 40 items of clothing and other household goods to a church or community organization that is not in your neighborhood.

4. Save $40 by giving up that morning cappuccino, or potato chips at lunch, or a diet soda) and donate it to an organization that works to reduce poverty in one of the 40 cities.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving during the 40 days of Lent allow us to enter into a special state of grace. Could we widen that circle to include the other, the unknown, the one who is in need?

See the complete list of 40 cities on nytimes.com

Do you live in one of these cities? Share with us the challenges facing those who are poor in your community. What ideas do you have for Lenten observances? Post your comments below or join the discussion on our Facebook page.

Love is in the Air

Today, the legendary St. Valentine is popularly celebrated, so it seems like a good time to talk about “love.”

In ancient Greece, philosophers struggled to define the different dimensions of love: are we talking about eros (desire, passion, ecstatic love), philia (friendship), or agape (concern and care for the other)?  Christianity inherited Greek thought about love and re-invented it to create a new paradigm, a distinct understanding of love.  This understanding has evolved through the ages and modern writers like C.S. Lewis continued to wrestle with love’s dimensions.

More recently and importantly, Pope Benedict XVI chose the topic of love for the first encyclical of his papacy, Deus Caritas Est: God is Love. It is a work of great depth, including discourse on the path of two people “in love” towards divine love, where body and soul are intimately united. I hope to shed light on one of the other dimensions of love he discussed: love of the “other.”

From the Book of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might,” to Jesus’s twofold great commandment of love of God and of neighbor at the Last Supper, The Holy Father explains what “loving our neighbor” means and why it is so important. 

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his  brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20)… The unbreakable bond between love of God and love of neighbour is emphasized. One is so closely connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbour or hate him altogether. Saint John's words should rather be interpreted to mean that love of neighbour is a path that leads to the encounter with God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbour also blinds us to God.

“In God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know.” 

This love of God and other is first the responsibility of each individual, but also a responsibility of the community at every level. As people of God, we must both love and serve our neighbor. This is caritas.  It shapes not only Catholic Charities but each of us, as bearers of light in the world, of faith, hope, and love.

Love is in the air today. Amidst the chocolates and the roses, can we find ways not only to express love for that one special person but also God’s love for those outside our immediate family or circle of friends, or church community, especially those who are poor? They are in need of material goods--food, housing, clothing to be sure. But many need much more than outward necessities.  Seeing each of them as brother or sister in Christ, we see a friend who, like us, has an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. Can we open our hearts to give them that gesture of love which they crave?  Even if we don’t like or even know them.

That Persistent Drive Towards the Goal

Drive. Rush. Goal.  Sunday’s Super Bowl was a great event, perhaps the most visible display of the human will to win. And from the New York Giants’ point of view, evidence that determination and persistence can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. 

 
Source:  OregonLive.com/Associated Press

It reminded me of an article I read earlier in the day in The New York Times, “The Hidden Homeless,” and how similar these two stories are.  The Times recounted the day in the life of a homeless family in New York, Tonya Lewis and her two sons, who live in one of the city’s shelters.  By 4:45 in the morning, she is already running late. She and her children needed to get started on their day to work, school, and daycare that involved a relentless march through the public transportation system - four subways, two buses, and long walks on either end - a four-hour trek in all, each day. At 8 p.m., they return to their room and prepare for the next day.

 
Source: The New York Times

Their story is not unfamiliar to Catholic Charities. Ms. Lewis and her husband had jobs - low paying but enough to cover the rent on their apartment.  But he lost his job as a maintenance worker, and her hours as a home health aide were reduced due to cuts in Medicaid. In the course of a few months, the family’s income dropped from $4,400 a month to $840. They could no longer afford the rent on their $1,200 a month apartment.  A government program that provided rent subsidies was discontinued. The family split up and joined the growing and all but invisible ranks of the homeless.  The article describes the situation in New York City:

Unlike in the 1980s, when the crisis was defined by AIDS patients or men who slept on church steps, these days it has become more likely that a seemingly ordinary family, rushing about on public transportation with Elmo bags and video games, could be without a home.

Of New York’s more than 40,000 homeless people in shelters — enough to fill the stands at Citi Field — about three-quarters now belong to families like the Lewises and are cloaked in a deceptive, superficial normalcy. They do not sleep outside or on cots on armory floors. By and large, their shoes are good; some have smartphones. Many get up each morning and leave the shelter to go to work or to school. Their hardships — poverty, unemployment, a marathon commute — exist out of sight.

Yet they have a goal - to get back on their feet - and they drive forward, every day gaining a few yards towards that elusive goal. 

We’ll be gathered around the water cooler or coffee room this week reliving the game (the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat).  Could we also talk about these families?  Read the article. You’ll see that the stories are not so different after all.

What is your reaction to the NY Times article? Have you seen a shift in homelessness in your community? Are there any homeless children at your child’s school? How is the community responding?  Share your stories and examples here, or join our Facebook discussion.