Picture Page: Hearts for the Homeless

Photos by Matt Brown

Text by Ron Calandra, Executive Director of Hearts for the Homeless

Hearts for the Homeless celebrated its 20th year of outreach to the poor and homeless in Buffalo on December 24, 2010.  My wife Peg and I have been with Hearts since its inception. Annually, Hearts for the Homeless continues to reach thousands of homeless and poor people through its Mobile Soup Kitchen and also helping to meet the needs of its immediate community through Hearts Thrift Shop. In 2010 more than 12,472 poor and homeless people were served.

Hearts has five separate committed and dedicated Mobile Crew Teams consisting of 26 adult volunteers, each committed long term to one night per week. We also have an 80 year-old woman who has been a volunteer for over 15 years and many other long term committed volunteers like her.  We also have some youth volunteers that go out in tandem with adult supervision, some need to put in community service, some have caught Hearts’ mission and want to serve on a regular basis. We also have a few volunteers in Hearts Thrift store who help to maintain and tidy up the store as customers come in and out all day, and help to restock and display products.

      Hearts relies heavily on our main resource - the generosity of individuals, churches, and local organizations for its funding.  We do receive some matching donations via some larger company employee giving programs like Praxair and Liberty Mutual Foundation and the United Way has an employee payroll deduction program of which some of our donors find a convenient way to give. 

     Hearts' Mobile Soup Kitchen (an RV where we serve prepared meals, with a clothing pantry on board) has one stop known to all our clients, which is at the Buffalo and Erie County Library, downtown Washington and Ellicott Street, we park under the overpass connecting the two library buildings.

Although we do not ask where the people are coming from, as we get to know the "regulars" we know that the homeless are dispersed throughout the city, live under city bridges and nooks and niches where they are shielded from cold weather and wind; and the poor families that have residences come from all over including the West Side, Riverside and Downtown. 

     The best part of the job is knowing that when we go out and feed people at night they won’t be going to bed hungry. The most challenging aspect of the ministry is having enough resources to lift more people out of their pit and improve their quality of life – that would be permanent.  (i.e. help someone off the street, get an apartment which we have done in the past, creating a job that pays more than minimum wage like a clothes sorting job for our Thrift Shop); and having more resources to impact more lives in bigger ways. (i.e. getting someone a car – we helped a young woman get a car by which she was able to go back to school for nursing and succeed; we watched the hand of God move in her situation.)

      It is very difficult to watch a mom with kids walking down the street, scurrying along, dragging a buggy in one hand and corralling the other kids with the other hand just to get something to eat.!