Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [21]
Organizations that provide services to seniors, the unemployed, the physically or mentally disabled, the homeless, recovering drug and alcohol abusers, and former prison inmates always need volunteers. Two particularly impressive examples in this category are faith-based: Project H.O.M.E. in Philadelphia, founded in 1989 by Sister Mary Scullion and Joan Dawson McConnon, and the Inter-Religious Fellowship for the Homeless of Bergen County, New Jersey. Project H.O.M.E. has grown from an emergency winter shelter for the homeless into a comprehensive effort to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty. It has created more than four hundred housing units, three businesses that employ formerly homeless people, a learning center and technology lab, and promoted an effort to improve the urban environment by greening vacant lots. I recently visited Project H.O.M.E. in North Philadelphia with Jon Bon Jovi, who has committed the funds to restore fifteen old buildings for first-time home buyers. Comcast funded the technology lab. The Saturn division of GM will make sure the buildings are green, maximizing energy efficiency and holding down utility bills. The money is important, but what makes Project H.O.M.E. work is the intense person-to-person involvement with those who want to change their lives. That takes people.
About twenty years ago, a group of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders worked together to form the Inter-Religious Fellowship for the Homeless (IRF) of Bergen County. Though one of the wealthiest counties in America, it has a sizable homeless population, including families with children and people with full-time jobs. The fellowship runs several programs: an emergency family shelter for families not eligible for or served by other programs and most often homeless because of a lack of affordable housing; a transitional program to help families regain their independence; an overflow shelter program with the support of more than sixty congregations; daily meals for up to 150 people through a “walk-in” dinner program; scholarship support for enhanced education or training that will increase job opportunities and earning potential; and a two-week summer program for thirty children for families served by the IRF.
While the fellowship raises funds for all these endeavors, it has only five paid employees. The rest of the work is done by more than four thousand volunteers whose contributions range from cooking one meal a year to staffing the office on a regular basis. For twenty years, one of the volunteers, who has thirty-seven grandchildren, has served as grandmother to the families in the shelter in addition to coordinating all the volunteer groups. Volunteers come from various congregations, social groups such as Rotary clubs and Knights of Columbus, and from the business community. High school students play with and tutor children in the family shelter and raise funds to support the summer camp. Various congregations “host” the family shelter for a week at a time, providing all the meals, and two volunteers who stay all night. They’ve had some amazing encounters. One volunteer, a teacher, met a single mother with four teenage daughters and a full-time job as a nurse at a New York hospital. The woman became homeless when the hospital eliminated overtime and she could no longer afford the $1,500 a month in rent on her apartment or come up with the security deposit and first month’s rent for a new place. At 1 a.m. one night, the teacher