ABUNDANCE

              In February, I was approached by the Director of a homeless shelter agency and the Mayor of a local village. They wanted me to help them startup a shelter, a shelter for refugees. The facility would be in Ford Heights and the agency was Beds+Care.

              We found a place and started getting a crew together to staff the facility. We also had to make the facility which hasn’t been used in several years between plumbing, lighting, fire safety and a commercially viable working kitchen we had our work cut out for us.  In late April we started getting our first group of refugees, they were from Venezuela, and Columbia. Our participants had walked the 3000 mile from Venezuela to the US border. They had been shipped to Chicago and approximately 300 plus were sleeping in an unused warehouse on the near North side of Chicago.

              We were recruiting appropriate candidates from that 300 to be participants in our 90 day program.

              Our program was an opportunity to learn English, job training and to obtain a job. Once employed we would assist them to get them a small apartment. None of them spoke English.  They were very excited about the opportunities that we had and when classes started for our first 30 individuals.  Every person there went to the ESL classes and the job training.  The way the program worked; they had 90 days to accomplish these goals.  They were not required to pursue these goals but if at the end of the 90-day program and they were not employed they would be out of the program and out on the street.

              So, for me it was refreshing to see people enthused about the opportunities here in America and we talked about that a lot.  Too often I hear how outsiders are going to take our jobs away.  These jobs of course are minimum wage, and generally hard labor. Those jobs generally go unfilled.  So, restaurant jobs, fast food jobs, heavy industry are not what most people here aspire to. The men at the shelter had walked 3000 miles through the jungle to not take advantage of this opportunity.

              Too often we take our abundance in America for granted.  Our grocery store shelves are full, fast-food restaurants abound, and just drive along LaGrange Road in Orland and see how many restaurants there are.  Now image how much of the food that gets served gets thrown in the dumpster.  Our pantry gets excess food from another pantry that they cannot use. The other day I received a call from someone who was offering us a pallet of frozen turkeys.  We would have to go pick them up and figure out how to store them while we figured out where to distribute them.  They were coming from the South Side of Chicago.  We consume and produce more food than any other country, and yet there are “food deserts” in many places on the South side of Chicago.

              I believe that as individuals we need to connect to a variety of food banks and give food or money to help stock these food pantries.  There are several in our neighborhood.

St. Damien                 St. Christopher                        St. Stevens

Together We Cope               Greater Chicago Food Depository

To name just a few.  We have so much while others have so little.  That is just not the Christian way.

In Christ

Art James       Council Vice President