Drop-in center for street people

Vincent De Paul, on sending women volunteers (who were to become the Daughters of Charity) into the slums of Paris, told them: “Pray that the poor forgive you for the gifts you give them.”  Seemingly a strange advice for benefactors about to bestow benefit on the needy, Vincent, a wise man, realized that the gift placed the benefactor and the recipient at different levels.  What he was hoping for was what Martin Buber, a Jewish philosopher, calls an “exchange of gifts” where both benefactor and recipient end up “gifted.”

There are presently a number of feeding programs for street people around Metro Manila and the country (ironically seemingly increasing in a booming economy). Yet if Vincent de Paul were alive, he might suggest a different approach.

He might think of a drop-in center where volunteers would invite street people to join in the preparation of the food, sit and share the meal with them and enter into relationships where not only food but lives are shared—and to come together regularly to sing and reflect as a community. Do street people think about the future of their children?  About health care?  About security?  About a better place to live in instead of the streets? About the things that concern every human?

Together, could we not develop ways wherein street people themselves could become early childhood education teachers for their own children?  Community health workers?  Carers of one another?  More than 150 community-based programs, being implemented by the members of the Confederation of Older People’s Associations of the Philippines in urban poor areas of the Greater Manila Area alone, testify to the possibility of such an undertaking.

How? A place where people could come and help prepare a meal, a group of volunteers (religious congregations willing to try a new apostolate—Pope Francis would be proud), community organizers to work with the group to foster community spirit.  Possibly a place to take a bath and wash clothes, maybe even to park the kariton.  I heard Fr. Robert Reyes was able to feed people for a month at Christmastime last year on Katipunan Avenue from the “leftovers” of restaurants along the same street.

Why not us?

—ED GERLOCK,

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