Walk for the Homeless

I've been thinking about this every day for the last month.

One day in April a little graphic on Facebook caught my eye.  There was going to be a Walk for the Homeless on a Saturday in May.  Two former players for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Tunch Ilkin and Craig Wolfley, have lent their names to this annual fundraiser for the Rescue Mission run by the Light of Life Ministries on Pittsburgh's Northside.

The names of these two former NFL players were somewhat familiar to me, both because I've been following the Steelers for 35 years and because they have a radio show in Pittsburgh.  But I had never heard of this fundraiser.  Until two years ago I had never heard of Light of Life, either.  But then I took a position as faculty for the emergency medicine residency training program at Allegheny General Hospital.  The Ministry's shelter for the homeless is just a few blocks away.

Over the years I have written many checks to make charitable contributions.  I have much more limited experience as a fundraiser.  For the last six years I've served on the Board of Trustees of the Emergency Medicine Foundation, which raises money to fund grants for scientific medical research in my specialty.  This experience has shown me that I'm not very good at asking people for money, although I'm working on it and have gotten a little better than I used to be.

One cannot spend any time in medium-sized or larger cities in the United States without encountering homeless people.  This is a tragic fact of life in our country.  The reasons for homelessness are numerous, varied, and complex, and I wil not try in this essay to offer any sort of discourse on the nature of this deeply saddening social problem. But on the streets of our cities it is there, every day, facing us.  And we mostly turn away.

I know I look away when I see a homeless person on the street holding a sign. There are only so many variations on "Homeless - Please Help."  I feel as though I've read them all.  I've also read many articles telling me money given to these people will go to buy booze and cigarettes.  One could argue that we should not make value judgments.  If that's what they want to spend their money on, why does it matter?  Well, aside from the Puritanical wish to avoid funding vices, I think it is not helpful to support addictions or to give people money in hopes they will use it for food only to have them spend it on things that will damage their health and make their lives worse instead of better.

In a search of the blogosphere I found several essays by people who had explored urban homelessness and found an abundance of sources of food and shelter, and even discovered that some of these folks have access, through the social support services, to day labor they can do to earn a bit of money.

Surely this guy could be helped to find work!

Aside from poor choices in what to do with the money, it might seem to be a good idea economically.  After all, money given to the homeless will be spent right away, and any economist will tell you that is a good thing in a consumer-driven economy.

But the immediacy of the spending has a downside.  It is not invested in making life better.  What the homeless need to get their lives moving in the right direction is a roof over their heads and a job.  A charitable organization that provides food, clothing, shelter, counseling, and
training is focused on changing lives.

The Light of Life Ministries is incorporated, and I spent some time on their Website reading about them.  This is a capsule of what they try to do:

The Corporation operates a long-term (12 months or more) recovery program for men, women, and children, in addition to outreach services that provide for the direct care of the needy and homeless populations. These include: a comprehensive recovery program consisting of transitional housing, counseling, education, work training, individual case management, and health care referrals; and Samaritan ministries providing meals, emergency shelter, chapel services, and community outreach. The goal of these programs is to equip people to transform their lives and function as productive employees, competent parents, and healthy, self-sufficient citizens to the greatest extent possible. 

This language is, of course, written to appeal to those who might be inclined to donate money, but any charitable organization is "mission-driven": everything they do is planned and executed against the backdrop of their Mission Statement, with the question repetitively asked, "Is this consistent with, and in the service of, our mission?"

I read a bit more about the fundraiser.  It's a 10K walk.  I popped that into the section of my brain that does arithmetic, and it translated into two hours of walking at a moderately brisk pace. Walking is not an activity I enjoy.  I injured my knee playing basketball in college. (Intramural, not varsity - I'm not anybody's idea of a competitive athlete.)  There are two C-shaped pieces of cartilage in the knee joint that have a cushioning function.  These were both badly torn and had to be removed.  I also tore ligaments, which were never repaired, so the joint is inherently unstable.  So walking, which pounds the knee joint with every step even if your body weight is not too much more than it should be, is not pleasant for me.  But hey, there are people who have walked across America.  (Really. You could look it up.  A Google search will even yield a link with a list of people who've done that, so it's not just one crazy guy.)  So surely I can manage two hours without whining about it.

I thought I could handle that part.  But what about the asking-people-for-money part?

Now that I've been blogging for two years, it should be obvious that I like to write.  So there is e-mail and there are social media. The only social media stuff I do is Facebook. But this could work.  Post messages, send messages, trying to reach hundreds of people who are, at least nominally, my friends, and try to convince them this is a good cause and that they should pony up some bucks.  It shouldn't be so hard to pester people when I know that they do not have to read what I write if they don't want to, and if they do read it, they will do so at their own convenience.  I'm not showing up at their door like an evangelist or calling them in the middle of dinner.  Yeah, I can do this.

Here's part of what I wrote in the last of my series of e-mails:

Practicing emergency medicine at Allegheny General Hospital, just a few blocks from Light of Life, has shown me what an important community resource this ministry is.  I do not have to discharge homeless patients to go find a place to sleep under one of Pittsburgh's many bridges.  Helping those who benefit from the services available through Light of Life means helping the least fortunate of the unfortunate.  I cannot think of a more worthy cause.

I know, I know, it's not Thoreau (no rhyme intended).  But I think it gets the point across.  And I'm hoping it will generate enough of a response to push me well past the 110% mark for my original personal fundraising goal.  If you're reading this, and you aren't one of the friends who have already helped, I hope you'll consider it.  All you have to do is go to this link, click on the big orange "Donate" button, and follow the instructions.  I plan to come back with Part II of this essay after the walk.

http://www.crowdrise.com/tunchandwolf/fundraiser/bobsolomon