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PencilOnMyBackPorch is blog written by Fran McCrackin.

You know how something can be too big a story to write? How to manage to share the heart of it, I wonder?

What I will do today is share others’ words that moved me.

This morning I attended a fundraising breakfast for Friendship Place. This is an organization to help the homeless in Washington DC and environs. Over their 35 years in existence they have grown from their original Welcome Center house to encompass many programs, partnerships, and properties. They can hand out breakfast and snacks and new socks, make a rent payment on the spot so someone avoids eviction, help with job readiness and placement, provide an apartment, even guide a young person leaving foster care on how to manage so that they avoid becoming homeless.  

Whenever they have a fundraiser- breakfast, walk, concert- they include speeches by participants in the program. And also by staff who were former participants. Here are a few of their words at breakfast today:

Context: older gentleman who began as a participant and now has worked for the organization for many years-

“I’ll never forget how they rebuilt my confidence, my self-worth.” (Tearing up) “They gave me the keys to the office. They gave me the keys to the office.”

Context: middle-aged man, currently the beneficiary of an apartment provided by the organization, who started and runs a community garden on the grounds-

“The best way to help yourself is in service to others.”

Context: a veteran and mother who experienced homelessness repeatedly with her young children–

“When I’m in the kitchen cooking, and that smell wafts out where my children can smell it, that’s when we know we’re okay.”

Context: formerly homeless woman, now counseling veterans, tells them-

“This is a comma in your life, not a period.”

Slogan of Friendship Place-

“Ending homelessness, Rebuilding lives.”