TCAA coordinates the Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program - for more information or to volunteer in the program, please contact Stephen Sparks.

by Nancy Puffer - Jan. 27, 2010 12:18 PM
Special to the Republic
If there is one thing that people of most faiths and religious backgrounds have in common, it's a desire to make the world a better place, often through volunteering and service projects like last Friday's Tempe Project Homeless Connect event.

Folks like 57-year-old Robert Escamilla came in hungry with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. When he left, he carried two small grocery sacks full of used clothes and a hot meal in his belly. He praised the generosity of the event host, Tempe First United Methodist Church, and was thankful for the convenience of having a whole host of services tailored to his needs in one place.

"What helps is you have everything here, centralized, that you need, like social security, food, showers, and the clothing. I need it now," said Escamilla, who sleeps behind a warehouse near Broadway and Roosevelt. He says any extra clothing he carries is usually stolen, and he often needs to replace what he's got. "We go to St. Vincent de Paul, to a church, things like that. They're the only ones who help out. There is nobody else."

Escamilla's experience at Project Homeless Connect is a snapshot of an emerging and effective remedy for local homelessness - collaboration between churches, synagogues, temples, stakes, and other faith-based groups - regardless of their differing philosophies - with non-profits.

"I would say non-profits are faced with having to collaborate, because everyone has fewer resources to use right now. So the non-profits, whether they're faith-based or not are finding they really have to collaborate if they want to continue to deliver a program or a service," explains Amy Schwabenlender, community investment manager for Valley of the Sun United Way.

By combining efforts and resources, assistance agencies are able to do more with less, and the generosity and commitment of faith-based groups plays a key role.

"It's made a tremendous difference here, especially in Tempe," explains Theresa James, homeless coordinator for the City of Tempe. "When we started doing Project Homeless Connect back in January of 2007, most of our volunteers at that time were from the faith communities here in Tempe, and we couldn't have started this without them. They are also involved in I-HELP (Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program) which is a program where I believe 24 churches from around Tempe, faith-based communities, take turns providing lodging to homeless folks every night of the week and providing them with a hot meal. That's a beautiful program and something that could be replicated lots of places."

At Friday's Project Homeless Connect, more than 150 volunteers came together to provide the local homeless with everything from food, showers, and clothing to assistance obtaining social security benefits, detoxification programs, and even bicycle repair.

"We fix up bikes for the homeless, give them tires and tubes and whatever we have, parts," said Luis Alcivar, founder of Karma Racing. "There are probably about 12 different things going on in the Valley a month that help the homeless, showers and stuff like that, and we're out there fixing their bikes at no charge."

Many of the local faith-based volunteer teams also help on an ongoing basis through programs like TEAM (Tempe Emergency Assistance Ministries) or I-HELP.

"Initially, Project Homeless Connect in the Valley was started by Tempe, based on the San Francisco best practice. But Tempe was the first municipality to say, 'We're going to do this.' So through the faith-based partnerships, and I think a lot of it ties to I-HELP and the churches who rotate through that lodging program, also support Project Homeless Connect," said Schwabenlender.

Tempe's Bethany Community Church hosts I-HELP at their campus at least once a month. Gen Garan, a Bethany I-HELP volunteer, says her Christian beliefs play a big role in her commitment to community service.

"I can think I can speak for all those who have been involved with the program at Bethany that they have found the experience to be a good one, and from a Christian perspective, an experience that blesses the giver as much as the one receiving, simply because of being part of God's delivery system to hurting people," Garan said.

Dave Wells, who belongs to the Tempe Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Quakers, says his group participates in I-HELP by assisting at other local houses of worship.

"The Quaker Meeting serves once a month and though we don't host at our facility presently, we do provide the sheets and blankets at University Presbyterian when we provide the meal. It's really brought our Meeting together and we enjoy having this opportunity to serve others," Wells said, adding that more help is needed. "Despite all the great things about I-HELP, we're not able to provide a bed yet for everyone who needs one, so it's very important for the faith communities in Tempe who have not yet gotten involved to do so, so that we can expand the number of hosting sites in the future so that no person who qualifies for shelter is turned away."

Even as a homeless individual, Escamilla assisted I-HELP as a community monitor, an example of how different perspectives are valuable in making collaboration work.

"I know everybody on the streets. That's the one thing that helped the I-HELP program. I knew everybody. Everybody knew my name. The coordinator of the program would ask me, 'Who's this person,' and I would say, 'Oh, she's this person, she's bi-polar,' you know. I knew who they were," said Escamilla, who now belongs to Tempe First United Methodist Church and applied for affordable housing last week. "A lot of people can benefit from a program like this to get back on their feet and get back to working, back to living."