- Franciscan Outreach Association
- 1645 W. LeMoyne Street, Chicago, IL 60622
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What's New Archives for
August 5, 2003 to October 28, 2003
Starting to think about holiday
shopping?
That cold air making you reconsider whether you're well enough
prepared for winter?
Now, when you shop online, you can support Franciscan Outreach
at the same time!
It's easy to do!
Just join iGive and list
Franciscan Outreach as your
favorite cause.
Then, next time you go shopping online, go through the mall at iGive.com to get to your favorite online retailer. Franciscan Outreach will automatically receive a small percentage of the money that you spend.
The iGive mall includes more than 470 different retailers.
You can shop at
|
Old Navy Sears Barnes & Noble Land's End Sports Authority LL Bean J Crew Spiegel |
Kohl's JC Penney Circuit City REI Timberland Fannie May Candies Bath and Body Works |
Gap Marshall Fields KB Toys Discovery Store Sharper Image Niketown |
and many, many more stores.
Join now, shop within 45 days, and
Franciscan Outreach will receive a $5 bonus
in addition to a percentage of the money that you spend.
For the week of
Can't wait for your next
Franciscan Outreach Newsletter?!
You're in luck!
We have a special preview for you!
The following guest profile, along with a photo and other great articles about the goings-on of our programs, will appear in the next Newsletter. Look for it in your mailbox!
Not on our mailing list? Click here to sign up to receive our quarterly newsletter and other mailings from Franciscan Outreach Association.
I Will Stand Up
by Sr. Pamela Falter, OSF
“I will stand up and tell anybody that this church is worth
getting help from at any time with any case manager.”
I met Bobby in September 2002. He had heard about Franciscan Outreach through a friend who comes here regularly. Bobby came for a referral for health care. He was having chest pains, leg swelling, high blood pressure, and needed glasses. I introduced him to Sarah Lau, the nurse practitioner from Chicago Health Outreach who has seen our guests at the Marquard Center for years. She helped with what he needed over the course of several weeks.
Bobby had worked his whole life, since he was 13 years old. He worked nearly 10 years at a single manufacturing company before he became sick, at age 46, in 2001. He couldn’t do such physical work anymore, then he couldn’t pay rent. He lived outside on the street...
The silent auction of the Fall Benefit Dinner is a long-standing tradition here at Franciscan Outreach. As always, we will be having a wonderful assortment of prize packages on which Benefit Dinner guests can bid. Some of the items available include:
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Roundtrip airfare for two between any two cities in the SouthWest system
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Tickets to see Chicago's own world-famous Second City improv comedy
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St. Francis Plaque from Assisi
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Dinner at the Parthenon restaurant in Greektown
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Madonna Tile Plaque from Assisi
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Dinner at the Fireplace Inn
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Christmas Ornaments
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Wine from Schaefer's Signature Collection
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Hand-made afghans
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Dinner at Scoozi's!
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A variety of gift baskets
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Dinner at Topo Gigio
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and much more!
The bidding on these prizes is only
open to guests at next Monday's Fall Benefit Dinner.
To see the invitation, click here.
Here at Franciscan Outreach, we are all looking forward to our Fall Benefit Dinner at the Union League Club. On October 20, we will be spending the evening with caring and generous people like you, eating good food, having good conversation, and knowing that the evening will have a great impact on our many poor and homeless guests. As you may have noticed on the invitation, we will also be welcoming two special featured guests to the dinner this year. Here is some information about those guests:
Mr. Ray
Ms. Joan Hickey,
highly regarded Chicago Jazz pianist,
will be performing to our ears'
delight with her quartet.
Joan has a B.S. in Music Education from
the University of Illinois. She teaches and performs as a free-lance
artist in the Chicago area. She has been recording and leading her
own groups (trio, quartet
,
sextet) since 1980, as well as accompanying vocalists. Venues
include The Jazz Showcase, The Green Mill, Pete Miller's, and the Chicago
Jazz Festival. Cab Calloway, Joe Williams, Milt Hinton, Nat Adderly,
Von Freeman, and Buster Williams are among the artists with whom Joan has
worked. Tours include Italy, Sweden, and Denmark with the Jazz
Members Big Band.
Joan has been awarded 2 National Endowment for the Arts grants, an Illinois Arts Council grant in music composition, and her quintet was a finalist in the Hennessy Jazz Competition. The latest CD, "Soulmates,"
was nominated for Best Jazz CD at the Chicago Music Awards. Her teaching experience includes jazz piano at the University of Illinois, C-U (current), Verhoog Music Institute, Jazz vocal camps, Illinois Summer Youth Music (ISYM), Midwest Young Artist Jazz camp, and University of Arkansas music camps, as well as a large private teaching studio of budding jazz pianists.
"Hickey remains one of the most appealing and distinctive pianists in the city....[She] produces gorgeously singing lines and unexpected harmonies. ...The gentility of her touch is matched by the intellectual accomplishment of her improvisation." --Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
"Pianist Joan Hickey's 'Soulmates,' featuring renowned bassist Buster Williams, is as notable for her songwriting and arranging skills as her keyboard chops. A vibrant harmonic glow informs her jazz and pop classics and originals." --Lloyd Sachs, Chicago Sun Times
For the Week of
Fall is upon us and the temperature is
dropping quickly! If you feel cold when
stepping outside, imagine not having
anywhere else to be!
We're glad to be able to provide warm, safe shelter and good meals to our guests. Unfortunately, many of our guests don't have everything they need to keep warm.
When we have
them, we provide thermal long-johns,
coats, sweaters, hats, scarves,
gloves, mittens -- clothes that will help our guests survive the cold Chicago winter.
Do you have gently-used winter clothes that you would like to donate for our guests' use? They will truly appreciate any of the items listed above. We will need items in all adult sizes, but we always have an especially hard time getting the few coats that we need in sizes XXL and 3X.
Every donation will help someone to stay warm through the winter. While we can't pick up individual donations, if you would like to organize a collection at your church or workplace or with any other group, we will pick up the items that you collect. However, call us before you arrange a collection - what if lots of people respond and we get too much? We have a few collections scheduled already but we need a few earlier ones. Email leah@franoutreach.org if you'd like to schedule one.
Please note that we don't have much storage space here,
so we can only take the clothing items specified.
For the week of September
We hope that you can join us
at our Fall Benefit Dinner
Monday, October 20, 2003
at the Union League Club.
To read the invitation, click on it.
Enjoy dinner,
music by highly regarded Chicago Jazz pianist
Joan Hickey, with her quartet,
and the words of honored guest
Ray Vázquez
Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Human Services.
For the week of Sept
Before he started staying at Franciscan House, Byron spent his nights sleeping on Lower Wacker Drive. He was working and about to get his own place, but one day his clothing and all of his identification were stolen. He kept his head up and found Franciscan Outreach. He is working with Nick on replacing the lost IDs.
While out and about, Byron found a wallet on the ground, with only a Jewel card inside. He used the wallet to keep business cards and notes about tasks that he needed to accomplish. A couple of weeks ago, he was on his way to see Nick after completing all of the necessary trips to receive a new ID. He must have dropped the wallet somewhere while on the Orange Line, but he didn't even realize it.
Someone else did realize it. The woman who found the wallet also found Nick's card inside. She called him and asked if he knew Byron. When he confirmed that he did, she sent the wallet to the Marquard Center via messenger. Not only did she pay the expense of the messenger service, but when Byron opened the wallet, he found $10 inside. He says that he was so overwhelmed that he almost cried. It made his day, as the situation was the most enlightening and fulfilling thing he could imagine. He was more than thankful and only wished he knew who the woman was.
What do you think is the moral of this story?
For the week of Septemb
It has come to mark the end of the summer, but according to the US Department of Labor, Labor Day is intended to be "a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country." At Franciscan Outreach, we find that many of our guests would love to have the opportunity to make such contributions.
Since we began recording these statistics at the beginning of 2001, employment has been at the top of the list of most common issues addressed by guests with our case managers, second only to permanent housing. During the 2 1/2 years from January 2001 to June 2003, our case managers had 2,904 conversations with their clients about employment-related concerns. Victor spoke for many of our guests when he told us:
"If I would talk to a case worker that would be the first thing right off the top is job and housing."
Unfortunately, things are rough
these days in the job market, even with the assistance of a case manager.
Some of our guests work for a company that staffs the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times. They work through the night delivering papers to stores and sometimes are able to find a place to rest in the Tribune or Sun-Times offices. Others work temporary jobs at summer festivals, conventions, or other capacities. But this work is unstable.
"I left the shelter, I guess, the last time was about three months ago. I got a temporary job and I went out and I got my own room. And the temporary job ended up running out. And as a result, I ended up back in the shelter." --Davad
Losing a job, whether temporary or full-time, is a common path that leads to homelessness and staying at a shelter like Franciscan House of Mary & Joseph.
"Well, the reason I'm staying at the shelter is because I got laid off on my job and lost my apartment...." --Willie
"I became homeless because I lost my job. I'm homeless because of joblessness." --Eileen
What can be even more frustrating is that though joblessness is often a path to homelessness, having a job doesn't always mean that one can afford to have a home. Several of the guests at Franciscan House of Mary & Joseph do work full-time. Working 40 hours each week at minimum wage of $5.15 per hour yields a gross of $10,712 for the year. This is not enough to afford decent housing.
"I was homeless before, because the same reason, I couldn't find steady work. ...It was hard to get a room with the income I had. I was making like minimum wage. It was hard to accumulate."
--Victor
"Right now, minimum wage job is not enough to sustain me as far as taking care of myself. ...I mean, like making five dollars and fifteen cents an hour...some weeks working three days a week, some weeks working five days a week. I mean , the rent goes on and the food still got to be put in the stomach, but the money just wasn't there." --Davad
Working with the poor and homeless, we believe that people deserve to be paid a living wage, especially if they are heads of households. Still, case managers do all that they can to help our guests in the imperfect world and the discouraging job scene in which we all find ourselves. They serve particularly as supports and provide a lot of encouragement for those guests who are working hard at trying to work.
"Joe. He's working with me. ...He helps me a lot.... And whatever I need, you know, he's always there for me.... Whatever I need, you know, like I said, it's going to take a little while.... He told me you have to be patient. Told me, you know, just, just keep working at it.... He's been working with me pretty good, you know. And some coming along pretty good now. I mean, I had some interviews everything, set up and everything. There's a lot of things that's been working for me. Like I say, it's not right away, but like I say, it's going to take some time. You know, but like I say, you know, I'll just have to just wait until that time comes...." --Charles
For the week of Aug
Save the Date!
Family Spaghetti Dinner
& Sock Hop
Presented by Franciscan Outreach Shelter Helpers
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Featuring
Music by Diamond Music Entertainment
& Food by Salina's
Andrew High School
9001 W. 171st Street
Tinley Park
Salad, Spaghetti, Meatballs, Breadsticks, Beverage and Desert
Dinner served from 5 t
Disc Jockey
Silent Auction
Door Prizes
$7 for adults at the door, $6 in advance
$3 for kids 10 & under
(All proceeds benefit Franciscan Outreach Association.)
For tickets, contact Linda Drozd at (708) 614-9382.
Want to help the homeless by hosting a spaghetti dinner in your area? Contact Diana at (773) 278-6724 or diana@franoutreach.org
For the week of August
At Franciscan Outreach, all of our work in rooted in the model that St. Francis provided for serving the poor. We do our best to follow Francis' call "to heal wounds, unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way." In supportive, welcoming environments where guests can feel at home, we help the poor and homeless to restore disintegrated senses of dignity and to piece their lives together again. We try to emulate the humble spirit of love, caring, sharing, and joy that Francis demonstrated to the poor in his time.
We recently had the opportunity to interview some of the guests of Franciscan House of Mary & Joseph about their experiences with Franciscan Outreach. The comments of one of these guests, Warren, allow us to see that Francis' ways are alive in our service.
"It been a blessing for me, because where I come from there’s people don’t reach out they way they are and they’re just as humble as they can possibly be. And as a matter of fact, I believe that’s why, it makes me feel stay more focused on myself and going back where I come from to get some acceptance in my life, because I have never seen anybody like these guys as humble as they are with the people that they have to deal with.
...[T]here’s no one that can walk around and...be as humble as they are and receiving the treatment that they’re receiving, but they keep giving a hundred percent back. Give it with a smile. It doesn’t matter how bad they cuss him out, the next one didn’t say it. They smile, oh, how you doin’, good to see you, glad you’re back in....
Even when I’m down some times, one of the [staff] will let me in. I’ll feel kind of tired or they’re out there taking names. They take the time out and say "Hey, Warren," and you know, and shake my hand. That means something to me. It’s not much, but it means something to me, you know. Or when I’m coming in and the guy’s at the desk and I’m standing in line waiting to let them know that I’m in: "Oh, I got your name; I know it now." You know, that means something to me, you know. I think it means something to them too. ...
...[W]ithout them actually saying anything about religion or what denomination they are, they’re showing me there is a God and God is using them. And they’re being obedient to the spirit of God. For [full-time volunteers] to come in here and volunteer and spend their time away from their families or whatever, whatever the case may be, they’re actually looking at to helping somebody else other than themselves and that says a lot. ..."
For the week of
Franciscan Outreach and the approximately 6,000 different individuals whom we serve each year owe a great measure of gratitude to the full-time volunteers who staff our programs. These generous individuals dedicate months of their lives, usually a year, to service. They live and work at our program sites and help to keep operations running. If we didn't have full-time volunteers, we'd have to pay over $200,000 each year to those people who'd fill their positions!
Beyond their low-cost staffing
benefits, full-time volunteers bless the Franciscan Outreach community
(both guests and staff) with their presence and their energy. Though
volunteer terms are staggered and can begin at any time, we tend to see a
changing of the guard during the
summer months, as volunteers move on and new volunteers join us.
We'd like to introduce you to the new members of our community.
Chigusa joined the shelter community back in June. Originally from Japan, this 25-year-old just completed the Master of Arts Program in Social Services (MAPSS) at the University of Chicago. She decided to take her interest in social services beyond academics and volunteer at Franciscan House for a year.
Matt, age 20, came south from Anchorage, Alaska to spend a year at the Marquard Center. His past experience as a counselor and head cook at a church summer camp will serve him well as he works in our soup kitchen.
22-year-old Dan put baseball rivalries aside and moved to Chicago from St. Louis to spend a year at our shelter. His familiarity with Franciscan Outreach dates back to 2000, when he spent a week at the Marquard Center with his high school.
Tiffany has also spent time in Chicago. During the summer of 2001, she spent 8 weeks here, volunteering in a variety of different programs. The 22-year-old returned to the City in July for a year at the Marquard Center, following her spring graduation from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Exercise Science.
Keeping the tradition of foreign volunteers alive, 25-year-old Marcell came all the way from Germany to spend 6 months volunteering at our shelter. A student of economics and psychology, Marcell enjoys martial arts such as kick and thaiboxing.
Monica is spending a year following in the Franciscan tradition at the Marquard Center in her home state of Illinois. At 25 years old, she is a candidate with the Franciscan Sisters of the Sacred Heart, of Frankfort, Illinois.
A native of California, Eric has been in Chicago for several years. Before coming to Franciscan House for a year of service, he was volunteering with the Blind Service Association, reading to blind individuals and helping blind students with coursework. The 23-year-old plans on eventually going into teaching.
19-year-old Tasha comes to her year at the Marquard Center from Wisconsin, where she recently completed a year studying art at UW-Richland Center. Her past experience includes volunteer work with Emergency Preparedness Training and sandbagging during times of floods.
In two weeks, we will welcome Shauna and Ethan, both 21 from California, to the Marquard Center and Randy, 19, from North Carolina, and Lorene, 25, from Oklahoma, to our shelter community. We thank all of our full-time volunteers for their concern for the poor and homeless and their commitment to making an effort to improving others' lives. For more information on our full-time volunteer program, click here.
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Do you have something of value that you'd like to donate to our Fall Dinner Silent Auction? Do you know someone who might? Silent Auction prizes can include tickets to sporting or cultural events, stays at vacation homes, dinners at restaurants, or valuable objects. If you'd like to help us raise money by donating a silent auction prize (or convincing a friend to make a donation), please contact Leah (leah@franoutreach.org) or Diana (diana@franoutreach.org) at 773-278-6724.
For the week of Aug
Where would our guests sleep if they couldn't come to our shelter? Does Summer make sleeping outside more attractive? Find our in this sneak preview of our Summer appeal letter...
Summer. Nice and warm outside. A homeless man or woman can find a comfortable park bench and settle down for the night. Enjoy the fresh air. It’s not as though it’s winter, when they’d have to worry about the weather. Right? The reality is...
If you can donate any amount of financial support to help see our programs through the summer, we'd really appreciate it. Here's a link to our donations page.
To donate on line using 
click here.
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