Why We Roll…. Jimmy!
June 15, 2008Posted in: 1 Comment
Jimmy came down Saturday. I had been looking in the right place for him down at the river but didn’t find him because he was in fact staying at the LC Hotel. (Called the Lucas County Jail for the rest of us.) I couldn’t find him there because the name he gave me was his street name, which is actually his first and middle name.
He was in for the usual items homeless get arrested for, drinking and loitering. He also had several failures to appear which makes sense if you are off your meds and/or drunk and do not even know what day it is, much less remember a date weeks out.
He says this stint in jail now has him all caught up with the law so he and the court are even. Until next time of course.
We hung out for an hour or so, and one of my pals that works at a local shelter and is going to help Jimmy get in Monday morning.
There are a couple other places that would be a perfect fit for Jimmy as well, so I am going to look into those this week.
Just wanted to share the joy. He still asks why we care about him, I told him it is just so he can pass it on. That makes him smile. He understands.
It’s the Results!
June 9, 2008Posted in: 0 Comments
1Matters Saturday Morning Meeting
I was wrong. Saturday morning I was overruled. This was not the last 1Matters Saturday Morning meeting, too much gets done. No one wanted to lose the momentum for our work. It was unanimous. I am so amazed by this team, how blessed the homeless are to have such committed advocates, including some who are currently homeless and formerly homeless.
We will be working towards following up on each of the items to be sure they get done simply because this is what is best for the customers. Besides those initiatives, we are creating a final report of our process/progress/solutions which will be released to the media, as will our revenue/salary/per-guest cost comparisons. We have an accounting firm that has consented to produce the latter.
Volunteers stepped up for each of the item/projects for follow through, and I am sure they will be nothing less than pit bulls until each of the action items are completed –meaning implemented or deemed not feasible.
We got a report from Norma on 1 of the initiatives from the 1Matters meetings, Project Black Bag. The letters were folded, sealed, and mailed this weekend to all the docs and nurses on our lists.
On Friday, Richard reported to TAAEH that St. Luke’s Hospital has joined the program along with Mercy Health Partners 3 Toledo hospitals, the University of Toledo Medical College, and of course 1Matters. Mercy has also areed to donate their Health Van every Saturday as well as the cost of the medications. Richard said he is talking to the Governor’s peeps about promoting this as a national model. Pretty cool that the genus was a discussion with the homeless who said access to health care was a huge problem. If this does go national our homeless folks should feel proud that they were the inspiration: That THEY Matter to those that Matter.
Believe It or Not
June 6, 2008Posted in: 0 Comments
- Quickly…
Tomorrow, last 1Matters Saturday meeting for the summer.
Awesome, the Mayor put together a poverty group, an awesome team that is going to check with the customers first, and then solve problems 1 at a time. I am privleged to be a part of this group. In our first survey we agreed not to do any bullcrap surveys, instead just gonna get it done. This could be fun! We of course will keep you informed here.
VERY Interesting Stats — Jeannette from 211 brought some stats to the TAAEH meeting. For thirty days (5/1-5/30) They asked all 211 callers wanting services if they were currently homeless. Out of 3193 calls, No and Not Recorded totaled 2923. Of the 272 (8.5%) stating they are homeless:
171 (62.8%) just said yes
74 (27.2) said yes living with family or friend
13 (4.7%) said yes living in a shelter
8 (2.9%) said yes living on the streets
6 (2.2%) said yes, living in my car
Now this is just raw data, and I don’t know if any of these calls are unduplicated individuals or families, but we need to continue these questions across several platforms. If these numbers bear out it gives us the FIRST accurate data of the hidden homeless.
We might know the 27 in the cars, shelters or on the streets, but I don’t think we ever had any kind of handle on the other 245. Even taking off the vague “Yes” answers, there are still 74 living with a family or friend. This data should be collected and included in our COC grant. This is remarkable supporting data.
Saturday AM & Updates
June 4, 2008Posted in: 0 Comments
1Matters Saturday Morning Meetings
This Saturday @ 8 am (At United Way) will be the last Saturday morning meeting for at least the summer. We will be discussing the accountability pieces, assigning follow up for the various initiatives (to be sure it is all getting done), as well as the design of the final report we will be releasing to the community and reporting to our friends at Tent City.
Once completed, we will schedule a press conference to release the report.
To be honest, I am totally amazed at how much you all accomplished on this by your caring. Previous posts document much of this progress but ALL of it was driven by asking the homeless what barriers are preventing them from achieving autonomy. Some of it we knew, some of it we didn’t. More compelling was finding out what we thought we were doing wasn’t working in some cases, but those agencies wanted that feedback and worked with us to design solutions.
The most visible of these will be:
- Access to medical services to the homeless through a partnership of Mildred Bayer, Mercy Health Partners, the University of Toledo College of Medicine, and 1Matters.
- The roll out to the agencies of Refer7. This gives everyone, the homeless, new case managers, old case managers, and service providers lsitings of ALL of the programs available, as well has how to access them.
- Equally important, and of equal impact is 1Mentors. This is because we know true help can only be delivered 1 at a time based on what that 1 guest that matters needs. Being there makes them KNOW they matter.
How cool is that? There is more, but time is short right now. Thank you all, you have really mattered to those that matter!
1Works
This is coming along very well. Dan Rogers has final meetings this week to design the scope of the training program.
The city has turned us on to 1 house that we are spec’ing. We are looking for 2 more in order to have a fair comparison.
Talents and Gifts
This past Saturday was the 1 year anniversary for Food For Thought, a weekly volunteer homeless outreach program that I am happy to serve with.
Every week (Yes, every week, even in the winter!) a cool musician named Todd Gagne’ comes down and plays guitar and sings for all assembled.
Enter Patti Nelson, one of the founding group for FFT and founder of Desitiny’s House, also a weekly volunteer who was actually my (literally) next door neighbor growing up.
Patti had written these words to this song and gave them to Todd. Between the two of them they crafted this song, called 1Matters. It is powerful and had both Don Scheiwer, another of the founders of FFT and me completely moved.
It is beautiful and talks about 1Voice, for 1 that matters. This will be the theme song for Tent City this year. They are in the process of recording the song now (we don’t do anything slow, lol) and once done we will film him for a video that will be the bed for the Tent City video as well.
And if that wasn’t enough, Patti emailed me and said she and Todd were going to contact other local bands and ask them to do a song along the same lines to fill a CD that would benefit 1Matters, FFT, and Destiny’s House.
How awesome 1 can be when 1 desires to matter to those that matter! Patti felt and wrote, todd felt and wrote, both are now inviting others to feel and write.
1Matters — Will you?
