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Project Dignity

serving the homeless with dignity, humility & love

Little Things Make a Huge Impact

The adage “People will forget what you gave them, but they will never forget how you made them feel” is never truer than when you work with children. Never make the mistake of thinking that they aren’t listening to you and that your words have no impact. I learned this in the most marvelous way last Saturday at our Library Program.

We have a library for the families at one of the motels we provide service to. It’s a beautiful little room that management retrofitted for us. It looks just like a mini library. One of our adult clients voiced it best, “It’s so pretty it hurts”.

A little girl and her father came into our library for the first time. The girl was around 6 years old. We explained how the library worked and that she could check out 2 books that needed to be returned in two weeks. She did and off they went. About 45 minutes later they came back because she had already finished one of the books and wanted to check out another one. We were delighted to help her.

She then came to me with two more books and asked if she could check them out for her baby sister. I told her that she was a wonderful big sister to care so much about her baby sister that she wanted to bring her some books too. I praised her for being so kind and thoughtful.   I made sure we had intense one on one eye contact while I was speaking to her.

She was a very shy little girl, but her face just opened up, she stood up straighter and she beamed at my words. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she had taken in everything I had said. I realized, not for the first time, what a blessing and responsibility it is to work with children. We have such an opportunity to reinforce behavior that will see them into their adult years with magnificent benefits.

I know this because I remember the times an adult in my life praised me when I was a little girl. I remember how my little heart expanded at their words.

Words are free, but their impact can last a lifetime. If we work with children, we need to make sure that impact is positive. You may never see that child again, but you can know that on that day, at that time, you made a difference.

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October 6, 2014 /// Filed Under: Practical Matters, Working with Children /// Tagged With: Matters of the Heart, Working with Children

What We Do

While we don’t feel anyone can ever fully understand the motel situation, we believe we understand it better than most. To our knowledge we are the only local organization who is focusing their services solely on the homeless population living in residential motels and we’ve been doing it since 1996.

It’s a long haul from homelessness to home, so our programs “wraparound” the challenges. Our first objective is to ease the burdens of daily living for our clients by assisting with necessities most of us take for granted–food, clothing and hygiene items.

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A tribute to our Founder

In 1986 doctors told Linda Dunlap she had 6 months to live and she told them the Lord knew more about that than they did. She said He had a lot more work for her to do. She proved herself and God right by living another 22 ministry-packed years.

Linda went into the motels singlehandedly with nothing more than her backpack and a few medical supplies. She won the confidence of people who had never had anyone care about them or help them before. Her belief and vision that one person can make a difference grew into 10,000 people being helped annually by Project Dignity.

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Project Dignity

12913 Harbor Blvd., Ste. Q3, #253
Garden Grove, CA 92840

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