“I am the mother of a seven year old boy in Greensboro who has a new mission: to help the homeless in his community. Today was the grand opening of his Etsy Shop, Elliot’s Ninjas: Helping the Homeless one Ninja at a time. He is saving half of all sales to benefit StreetWatch and the Pathways Shelter. Today he has already had his first two sales and is inspired to keep painting ninjas for his mission. I just thought you would like to follow along with his progress. Each week I plan to take him shopping for those needs you have posted on your website and take him to the location where he can give…

This started because Elliot has been wanting to give to the panhandlers he sees in Greensboro when he’s out on the town with me. (We homeschool.) It also happened because one night, while we were eating out at Cafe Europa, he wrapped his leftover bread in a napkin and wanted to give it to a man that we had passed at the library on the way in. We told him that there are so many other ways to give, and that he should think of a different way to help. So this is what he came up with. So far, he had a very good weekend and is exited to keep going.”

From Elliot’s Etsy shop:

“[These] 4 x 4″ watercolor painting[s are part of] a series of ninja themed art by Elliot. Half of the proceeds from [each] sale will benefit the homeless that Elliot sees in his city every day.

Elliot is often out and about in his city and is deeply concerned about the quality of life of the homeless men and women that he sees every day. In his words, ‘this horrifies me.’

Elliot feels called to help by giving. When you purchase a ninja painting, you have helped a homeless person and inspired a child to keep working for the benefit of families and individuals living on the street.”

>> Elliot’s Ninja Art is available for purchase online here. His watercolor paintings sell for $3.00 each.

P.S. I can’t wait to meet Elliot! ♥

This Saturday, May 19 our guests and staff will once again be at the Interactive Resource Center from 9:00 to 3:00 washing and detailing cars to raise money for our Guest Assistance Fund–the fund we draw on to help individuals with everything from a pair of work boots to a security deposit to a bus ticket back home. The car wash is donation-only ($10 suggested minimum).

In April our car wash raised over $1,000! Every dollar went into our Guest Assistance Fund to help a homeless or near-homeless person get on with his or her life. Many many thanks to the great volunteers and customers who made this possible.

Our guarantee: you’ll drive away looking good and feeling even better!

WHAT: Car Wash to Benefit the IRC Client Assistance Fund
WHEN: Saturday, May 19, 9:00-3:00
WHERE: 407 E. Washington Street, Greensboro

Homerun for Homelessness

When: Sunday, May 20, 2012; Gates open at 3pm; Opening pitch at 4pm
Who: Greensboro Grasshoppers vs. Lakewood BlueClaws
Where: NewBridge Bank Park, Greensboro

Join Partners Ending Homelessness for a great day at the ballpark and learn more about PEH partners. Visit exhibit tables highlighting the Servant Center of Greensboro, Room at the Inn’s Nurturing Center, Greensboro Urban Ministry, and StreetWatch. Learn more about the services they provide and how you can get involved.

PEH partners Keith Barsuhn, President of United Way of Greater Greensboro and Bobby Smith, President of United Way of High Point, will throw out the first pitch. Lisa Dames will sing the National Anthem.

Visit the Partners Ending Homelessness table inside the stadium. Partners Ending Homelessness encourages public understanding of the causes and conditions of homelessness and leads a strong and stable system of care for individuals and families to reduce homelessness in Guilford County. The Partners Ending Homelessness serves at the lead agency for the Continuum of Care.

Steps 4 to 7: Clean it up.

Steps 8 to 9: Make it up.

Steps 10 to 12: Keep it up.

* borrowed from my friend JB

>> Read 12 Steps with Bible verses

Find a program:

Alcoholics Anonymous: “Alcoholics Anonymous® is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.”

Al-Anon: “Strength and hope for friends and families of problem drinkers.”

Narcotics Anonymous: “NA is a nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem. We… meet regularly to help each other stay clean. … We are not interested
in what or how much you used… but only in what you want to do about your problem and how we can help.”

Nar-Anon: “The Nar-Anon Family Groups are a worldwide fellowship for those affected by someone else’s addiction. As a Twelve-Step Program, we offer our help by sharing our experience, strength, and hope. The only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of addiction in a relative or friend.”

New Home For Now
By StreetWatch  |  View on Facebook

We stayed to help them get set up. I’ve learned a lot from my homeless friends about how to set up a tent to live in it. Pallets go down first, so the water runs under the tent and not in it. If there are slats missing, find scrap wood and fix it, so that the bottom is even. Then, heavy layers of padding go on. Old quilts and comforters work well. Carpet remnants are good, too. Next, the tent goes up, and then you start working on the inside. More layers of blankets on the floor keep out the chill and the moisture from the ground below, and then add padding to the sleeping area. For a couple sleeping in a tent, two sleeping bags can be unzipped and then re-zipped together to make one big sleeping bag. When it’s cold, you sleep inside it. When it’s hot, you sleep on top of it. Boxes of clothes and personal belongings go inside the tent on the sides. You sweep the area in front of the tent and put down a rug or carpet, or a layer of gravel, to cut down on tracking dirt and mud into your tent.

Note: We’re thankful to the StreetWatch donors who make it possible for us to help unsheltered homeless people have a place to stay out of the rain, a place to keep some of their belongings, a place to lie down and rest. We’ve bought many, many sleeping bags and tents recently. The requests still keep coming every day. Please consider making a donation to our ministry. Thank you.

P.S. We’d love to tell you more about our friends, but they like their privacy and we totally respect that. If you knew them, you would love them, just like we do. ♥

“…So instead of doing laundry, I spent the morning putting together hygiene bags and snack bags and then went out with Michele & Melissa, two of the incredible members of Streetwatch, and visited some of their homeless friends in a tent city. I was beyond bummed when I had to cut out early in order to pick the kids up from school.

And guess what happened while we were out? Something crazy amazing. I knew I wouldn’t be super-helpful today. Most of their focus is on the relationships they build with the homeless people in our community and since I’m brand-spanking-new, it was just my first chance to start those relationships. I guess God knew how much I wanted to be of service today. There was one man at one of the tent cities who only spoke Spanish. He’d only just moved to that particular location three days ago – the only place I was able to visit today. The Streetwatch folks have known about him for much longer and had been really wanting to talk to him. I had never told them I spoke Spanish when I volunteered. It only came up when I was standing right in front of him.

Turns out he’d been wanting to talk to the leader of Streetwatch for awhile. I was brought to tears as he went on and on thanking her, sending her blessings, telling her he prays for her family, how he can tell she has a strong and noble heart. We talked with him for awhile, listening to him. I can only imagine how often he actually gets to have a conversation, given that he’s homeless and we found him today in a tent city where no one else speaks Spanish. Streetwatch provides snacks & basic supplies but also asks people what they need specifically. Guess what he wanted? A Bible in Spanish. He only has an English one. A man living in a tent city when given the chance to ask for something, asked for a Bible in his own language. That’s all. Humbling…”

>> Read all of “Better Than Dirty Laundry” by Kirstin at Our Journey to Africa.

Melissa and I met a new friend at the Freeman Mill tent city on Friday while we were doing StreetWatch. Jeffrey told us that he’s not homeless, “just a vagabond”, and he played and sang music for us and let me film him. The first thing he played was, I think, Ben Harper (top video). But what captivated me and spoke to my soul, was his rendition of “How He Loves Us” (bottom video). He shared with us about his journey in life, and let’s just say, the words of “How He Loves Us” (lyrics below) fit his story… and mine. God is good. I am grateful.

“How He Loves Us” lyrics, by Kim Walker

He is jealous for me
Love’s like a hurricane,
I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of
His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me.

Oh, how He loves us so
Oh, how He loves us
How He loves us so.
(x2)

Yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves.
(x2)

We are His portion and
He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption
by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns
violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way

He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Oh, how He loves
(x2)

Yeah, He loves us
Oh, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves.

Yeah, He loves us
He loves us
He loves us
He loves.

Yeah, He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves

He loves us,
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves us
Whoa, how He loves

“Alex Santos didn’t expect to be homeless before he was 30. Then, in the past few years, the 28-year-old lost his job, his wife and his home all in a row — the pillars of his life falling like dominoes.

He’s one of hundreds who have found help at the Interactive Resource Center, a homeless day shelter in downtown Greensboro partially funded by Guilford County.

But under a suggested $4.1 million in cuts to the county’s Human Services budget, Guilford would end funding for the center…”

I contacted IRC director Liz Seymour to ask what percentage of the center’s funding comes from the County, and how losing funding will affect the day center. Here’s Liz’s response:

The article was not entirely accurate–the County isn’t cutting existing funding, but it is cutting a funding request out of the proposed budget. There are some real and important issues at stake and we would love to have your help and support. The Commissioners will hold a series of budget hearings starting tonight and finishing with a county-wide hearing on Thursday, May 3 at 5:30 at the Commissioners Meeting Room in the Old Courthouse. It’s not just about the IRC, it’s all the groups out there who are helping more and more people with less and less support.

Our total budget is about $400,000 of which roughly half comes from individual gifts; the rest is largely from foundations, churches and a little bit from civic groups and businesses. (And honestly, although our budget is $400,000 we’re operating on an austerity budget that comes in a lot closer to $300,000–not sustainable, but necessary at the moment).

In 2009 the County allocated $275,000 for renovation of the building we are now in but we have never received any operating funds from the County. We put in a request last year through the CBO (Community Based Organization) process and were denied; we have applied again this year as a CBO with a request for $25,000 but once again are not in the budget. We do not receive regular funding from the City either, though this year we will be eligible to apply for a slice of Community Development Block Grant money, a federal pass-through that the City administers (it’s worth noting that the CDBG is a very small pie and everyone’s slice comes out pretty thin)

Because government funding at every level (local, state and federal) is in such jeopardy these days we have not built our long-range strategy around it. Our greatest growth at the moment is in individual gifts–this year fully half of our giving has come from first-time donors, which indicates to me that when people understand what we are doing they want to support it. The rule of thumb for philanthropy is that 70-80 percent of giving comes from individual donors; at the moment for us it’s a little under 50 percent. One of our biggest needs is simply to get the word out!

That said, anything we can do to persuade the County Commissioners to allocate funds to the IRC would be huge. At the most practical level the funds we have requested would pay for almost a month of operations. On a civic level Paul Gibson is absolutely right: ‘They’re doing the work the county’s not doing.’ And we’re saving the entire county a lot of money too…

>> Have a look at Guilford County’s Human Services FY 2012-2013 Recommended Budget Info here. Dates of budget meetings, work sessions and the public hearing; as well as links to all parts of the recommended budget, here.

>> Learn more about the great work that the Interactive Resource Center is doing to help the homeless! Make a donation online. Connect with the IRC on Facebook and Twitter. And help spread the word! The IRC provides much-needed services to people who are homeless, formerly homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Get involved!

The women’s winter shelter closed at the end of March. The Greensboro Urban Ministry shelter is full. She’s applied to the Salvation Army’s shelter program, but hasn’t gotten in there, either. There are no other shelters in Greensboro.

A nurse at the IRC (a friend of mine) suggested she call me. Our StreetWatch ministry provides tents and sleeping bags for homeless people who sleep outside. She asked me for blankets and she wanted to know where would be a safe location for her to sleep? And quite honestly, I didn’t know what to tell her.

I’ve had so many calls lately about homeless women on the street in Greensboro. They all need someplace to stay. I get calls from the homeless women themselves, calls from police officers, calls from homeless service providers. The shelters are full, what are the options? Well, not many that I know of.

There are women’s shelters in other towns nearby, but that’s not an option for many of these women, for various reasons. I’ve suggested to all of them that they go to the IRC, which has a housing program, but what I hear back is that unless they have an income, there’s no housing available. (Makes sense and I knew that, but I remain hopeful that someone will have housing vouchers!)

Most of the homeless women who sleep outside have a boyfriend or husband. If they weren’t with a partner when they became homeless, they find one quickly. I hear from many women that companionship and safety are very important when you live on the street. A woman living outside alone is much more vulnerable.

I’m not sure what to tell the lady who called me today. There are two tent cities within walking distance of downtown, but neither has single women living there and at both places, the residents have a voice in who joins their community, so there’s no guarantee that either will be the right fit for her. I’m not sure if she’d prefer community life or a place to herself. And it’s not always easy to find a safe, legal place to camp. (Property owners have given permission for homeless people to camp on the land where the tent cities are located.)

I’m about to go to the StreetWatch storage unit to pick up blankets and a sleeping bag and go find this lady. I still don’t know where she’ll sleep tonight. Another homeless woman sleeping outside in Greensboro. That’s messed up. We need a women’s shelter. Well, we need more shelter space for homeless people, period. But women, especially, do not need to be living outside. And women living alone on the street? That should just never, ever happen.