Hunger Is Not a Disease

10 Things You Can Do to Help the Homeless

Persons with no fixed address live in what some refer to as an “invisible world”.  With your help, they may not be stuck there. Making their day-to-day lives a bit easier is helpful and important.  There ARE things you can do.

This list of ten things to do may seem a little bizarre to you.  But, a List of Shelters is very different from a List of Food Pantries or Soup Kitchens.

If you take this list seriously and use some of the suggestions, you’ll understand.

You’ll see.

But, whether you try to do one item or all ten, I send you gratitude.  The things you do will ripple kindness out beyond your circle.  And, right now, kindness is needed desperately.

DEVELOP A LIST OF SHELTERS

Search out local shelters and create a list card.  List each shelter by location and include phone numbers and a bit of information which may be helpful to those without addresses.

Distribute copies of this card to homeless people.

MAKE A LIST OF FOOD PANTRIES

A homeless-friendly food pantry distributes  ready-to-eat items like peanut butter and crackers in individual packets, cereal and milk in individual containers. Some food pantries offer small containers of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Search out area food pantries that are homeless friendly.  Make an info card listing hours and days each pantry is open.  Include the phone number, address and directions to get there.

Distribute copies of this card.

INCLUDE A LIST OF SOUP KITCHENS

Search out area soup kitchens.  Make an info card listing hours and days each soup kitchen is open.  Include the phone number and address with directions to find it.

Carry copies of this card to distribute.

DONATE CLOTHING

Organizations serving the homeless always need gently used items in good condition.  They need items in all sizes from infant to XXL and beyond.

Blankets and sleeping bags are in demand year round.

People are always asking for socks.

DONATE GROCERIES

Because the homeless carry their kitchens in their pockets, their food needs are specific:  peanut butter and crackers in individual containers, individual packets of vegetables and fruits to be eaten raw (such as strawberries or carrots), cereal packed in individual containers, milk packed in individual containers.

When someone in your community conducts a food drive, donate a bag full of homeless-friendly foods.

If no one is having a food drive, fill a grocery bag with food  and take it to   your local food pantry, shelter, or soup kitchen.

Better yet, hold a food drive yourself.

In the past I’ve blogged posts about holding a food drive.  Several dates of these posts include May 3, 2018, January 13, 2021 – February 11, 2021 – February 25, 2021.  There are others.

Food drives are not difficult and they can be fun.  Everyone should have the experience.  Email me if you have questions.  thurmangreo@gmail.com

VOLUNTEER AT A SHELTER

Shelters depend on volunteers to sign people in, and cook and serve meals.  Depending on the resources of the shelter, you may be able to do other things such as helping kids with homework, teaching ESL classes, writing resumes.

VOLUNTEER AT A SOUP KITCHEN

Soup kitchen volunteers pick up donations of food, help prepare and serve meals, cleaning up at the end of the shift.

VOLUNTEER AT A FOOD PANTRY

Volunteering at a food pantry is a community experience.  I did it for years.  Never, at any moment, did I feel I was wasting my time.

SHARE A MEAL

Whenever you leave your home, bring a bagged meal to share with a person on the street.

ADVOCATE

When you do a few of the things on this short list, you will find yourself involved in your community, even if that was not your intention.

Your interest in hunger and homelessness automatically makes you an advocate – even if you don’t think you are.  When you help feed hungry and homeless people, you are fighting hunger in our country.

Most people in food pantries distribute a 3-day supply of food to everyone in each household.

But, however you see yourself, your good work, kindness, and generosity will ripple out beyond yourself and your community.

One thing is for sure, we need more good work, kindness, and generosity rippling out.

Something else happens when you share info cards, bagged lunches,  food, and sleeping bags:

The homeless people you interact with begin to lose their invisibility.  You  replace that invisibility with respect when you treat them as individuals.  Courtesy,  kind words and a smile will change not only your life but theirs. .

You may even learn someone’s name!

 

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Forward it to a friend or relative.

Learn more about hunger and homelessness on YOUTUBE at “Let’s Live with Thurman Greco”.

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Having touble finding  YOUTUBE interviews?  Send an email to thurmangreco@gmail.com.  We’ll get you there!

Thanks!

Thurman Greco

One last commercial here:  A “HOPE on the ROAD” presentation was recorded and is on YOUTUBE.  Tune in to YOUTUBE to benefit from this presentation.

I can present a segment of “HOPE on the ROAD” to your library, your organization, your class, your group.

If you are a Reiki practitioner, “HOPE on the ROAD” is easy to learn so you can present it to people in your area.

There is no charge for “HOPE on the ROAD”. To participate in “HOPE on the ROAD”, contact me at thurmangreco@gmail.com.

Thanks again,

Thurman

Food and Healing: Communion

Why are you talking about having no bread? – Mark 8:17

“You shouldn’t feed this kind of food to these people.  If they are hungry enough, they’ll eat anything.”

There’s a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food.  And, that’s why feeding is always a kind of miracle.

Food helps the sick and injured when the cook’s intention is incorporated in the “broth”.

Delicious food can be one of the last experiences of physical joy for the dying.

Food and healing go together because when you feed others with integrity, you help them heal.

Sharing food in the food pantry is a sacrament.

                                             – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The food pantry was in the basement of a church right off the village green.

And, I hadn’t even darkened the door in a church in over thirty years; not as a congregant, not as a guest.  The closest I came to the inside of a church or syagogue was a graveside burial service for an older relative in a military cemetery outside Culpepper, Virginia.  I also attended a Jewish wedding in a hotel in Baltimore.

When I became a pantry volunteer, I found myself in the local interfaith community, a stranger in a foreign land.  Right away I noticed that, intermixed with the need for peanut butter, shoppers showed a strong spiritual need for connection, acceptance.  This was the hunger beyond food.  The closest many shoppers ever got to a church or synagogue service was the pantry line in the basement of the building.

A food pantry is another way to have a religious service.  Sharing food is the prayer.  Food distribution in the pantry is a spiritual experience.

When things really get going, pantry volunteers regularly distribute thousands of pounds of cereal, beans, soup, grapes, lettuce, carrots, and squash, bread, cheese, eggs.

A liturgy is hidden in how we process the shoppers through the barn, the hallway, and the pantry room.  The pantry offers Communion to a group of people in the middle of a spiritual journey.

In the beginning, I didn’t see this.  Then, I began to get glimmers.  I saw things in people’s faces – I didn’t know what.  I couldn’t explain it.  But I recognized it.  I saw an expression, and had an “aha” moment.

This Communion doesn’t require much.  Shoppers and volunteers simply sign in at the food pantry door.  People came from all different places spiritually and religiously:  agnostics, atheists, B’Hais, Buddhists, Christians, Confucians, Jains, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Russian Orthodox, Shintos, Sikhs, Zoroastrians.

Early on, I saw something in a person’s face but didn’t know what.  I couldn’t pinpoint, describe or explain what I saw.

The man who lost what he believed was the last job of his life…

The old woman with her toddler grandson who chose his own apple at every pantry visit…

The senior wearing a baseball cap with “Korean War Veteran” embroidered on the front…

They came through the line and took what they needed for the week:  tomatoes, a bag of salad mix, squash, onions, potatoes.  They received what they chose with no strings attached.  Our nation’s abundance stocked the pantry.

Volunteers distribute food unconditionally to everyone who shops, without exceptions.  Hungry people pour through the basement weekly and leave, their arms loaded.  Some of them get almost more fresh produce and Bread Alone bread than they can carry.

And, if they can’t carry it, Richard, Robert, Jamie, and Little Mikey (the entire Allen family) help.

This family has a mission.  They help get supper from the pantry into people’s cars and on its way to their homes.

Each week I opened the pantry when I unlocked the outside door with a key.  The locked building also housed a beautiful sanctuary.  As volunteers, we were allowed in the portion of the hallway where the pantry and storeroom were located.

Each turn of the key reminded me that a church with no one in it is just a building.

We encountered faith in the pantry outside the church sanctuary on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.  With little or no religious doctrine, these weekly encounters were as freeform and varied as a faith can be because the State of New York insisted on secular food pantries.  I felt our pantry represented civic religion – belief in things without including God.  Everyone going through the pantry had a different doctrine.

It was all okay.

The whole thing reminded me of the birthplace of Lyndon B. Johnson at the memorial built in his honor in Johnson City, Texas.  After spending time at the memorial, I realized I visited a deeply religious and spiritual place…but it was civic.

There’s room for civic religious beliefs in the pantry.  After all, worship can happen in the most varied placees:  inside a jail cell, a cemetery, on Facebook, at a family table, a roadside shrine, a person praying on a rug at high noon in a parking lot somewhere, a mountainside, a stream, a hospital room, a monastery.

All it takes is for someone to be alert to what’s happening.

For me, every shopper and volunteer has meaning and is cherished.  Each and every one is of profound value.  It doesn’t matter whether or not anyone else sees them as successful or beautiful or useful even.  Success, beauty, and usefulness doesn’t impact anyone’s worth.  Everyone in the pantry is worthy.

That’s what matters.

Looking back on my time in the food pantry, no one else saw any similarity between Communion and the food pantry.

Church members never noticed the most popular service in that building each week fed the hungry at the food pantry in the basement.

And, I didn’t either in the beginning.

Later, when I recognized the face of God, I got it.

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Did this quotation interest you?  Is it a compellling message for you?  If so, maybe you would like to listen to the YouTube interview with Salvador Altimarana-Segura.

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I got an appeal letter from the Capital City Rescue Mission Today!

I got excited!

A letter from the Capital City Rescue Mission sent me a thank you note!  Just 2 weeks ago, they sent me an appeal letter, complete with return envelope.

And, today, I got a letter from  Covenant House.

So what, you say.

Well, so that.  That’s what!

When I managed the local food pantry here in Woodstock, I sent out appeal letters every year to a few thousand people.  I never, ever, saw an appeal letter from another food pantry or soup kitchen or halfway house.

My letters weren’t nearly so nice as the ones I got from the Capital City Rescue Mission or Covenant House.

The pantry appeal letters were hand addressed,  printed on a copy machine and hand folded.

Our return address on the envelopes appeared compliments of a volunteer hand-stamping each one individually.  A volunteer got the return address stamp at the Catskill Art and Office for less than $25.

Our mailers went out each year reeking of poverty.  No professional letterhead.  No nice paper.  They were just an appeal from a  group of people who needed to keep going from day-to-day.

But, they worked.  Those letters and the follow-up thank-you notes brought in enough money to meet our needs.  We always had enough for gas and sandwiches for the staff on the monthly food pantry stocking day.

When Guy dented the fender in his car in our parking lot, we had the money for repairs.

When we showed up in the food pantry one day to distribute food, there were no working lights in the basement of the church.

I never quite figured out what happened.  But this I do know:  Richard Spool arrived  in just a few minutes and dealt with the problem.  We had enough $$$ to get all the parts we needed at Houst.

And, this I do know:  The hungry people were fed, the lights were fixed, Richard saved the day, and the account still had a few dollars left.

But, now, back to the story.

Well, today I did.  The appeal mailer came in about 2 weeks ago and I quickly sent a check and a copy of my book (for encouragement).

Today I got a thank-you with another self-addressed envelope from the Capital City Rescue Mission.  (I think I’ll send another copy of my book for them to share. ) I’m going to send along another check.  I’m anxious to see how this plays out.

Meanwhile, if you are  a food pantry, soup kitchen, halfway house and need money, you can learn all my secrets starting on page 196 of my book, “I Don’t Hang Out in Churches Anymore”.  I held nothing back.  If you read this information, you’ll have the recipe for fundraising success.

In my heart, I want every pantry, soup kitchen, and halfway house to be rich enough to feed everyone who needs the food.  I want the food to be top quality – the best.

And, I want every pantry to have enough $$$ to fix the cars and trucks and the lights in the building.

I learned  these secrets at Rowe in Vermont when Kim Kline gave her annual talk.

If you feel you can’t take my word for all this success, get Kim Kline’s books and read them.  Or, better yet, attend one of her weekends (when the pandemic is over).

Remember, in our country, there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry.

If you’re reading this post and you don’t work for a pantry or soup kitchen,  you don’t have to wait for a mailer.  All you have to do is contact a food pantry and make a donation.

You don’t have to send a check.  If you want, you can hold a food drive and then haul over all the food you gathered.  The important thing is that there are many ways to support those who feed the hungry.

And, lately, there are more and more hungry people than we ever thought possible.  Your help and support will be appreciated.

Thank you for your generosity and thank you for reading this article.

If you liked this blog post, please refer it to your preferred social media network.

Thanks again!

Thurman Greco