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Project Dignity

serving the homeless with dignity, humility & love

Giving Advice

A very lovely woman from a local children’s organization called us last week, offering to do a food drive for Thanksgiving. We were of course thrilled. Our needs always increase during the holidays and even if they didn’t, it’s surely nice to give our homeless clients something extra.

Towards the end of our conversation the lady made a comment to the effect that one of the things we probably did was to give our clients advice or “point them in the right direction”. After our conversation was over I reflected on these comments. Giving advice and pointing someone in the right direction seems a loving, caring thing to do. What could be wrong with that?

The answer is, I don’t know what advice to give and wouldn’t presume to think that I do. The longer I serve in the motels, the more I become sure of one thing and one thing only—I am a stranger in this world and will never presume to think I have the answers.

Our homeless clients don’t come to us and say, “How did we get here”? “Where is the way out”? They already know. There are many reasons for a family to become homeless and of all of them our clients certainly know which one caused their homelessness. They’re not proud of it. Many times it isn’t even their fault, unless they can be blamed for a sagging economy, job loss or medical disasters. Society is filled with finger pointers and “experts”. Our clients know what they have to do to get out and it usually involves hard work and improved finances.

What they need from us is not practical advice, but practical help. We bring to them the things they need that they can’t procure on minimum wage salaries. After the motel rent is paid, there’s little left for anything else. Food, hygiene items, clothing, baby care items, household items, school supplies, these are the things our clients need. Making them available to our clients helps them stretch their resources.

One of our clients recently said it best—“You love us, you care for us, you help us. But you don’t tell us what to do”. One of our beloved board members, who was once a client echoed the same sentiment. We never gave them advice on what to do and yet in spite of it they managed to get out. All they needed from us was what we do anyway—we kept coming back, we cared about them, we provided resources for them until they had sufficient funds to sustain their apartment rent and we talked about anything they wanted to talk about, but we never, ever lectured them. When they were ready, we kept the promise we’d made to help them with the first month’s rent and it was done.

If you really want to help your homeless clients, do for them the one thing very few people do. Don’t lecture them. Listen to them. The road out of homelessness is paved with practical help, not useless advice.

November 4, 2014 /// Filed Under: All Tips /// Tagged With: Practical Matters

Don’t Forget the Can Opener

If you’ve started a motel ministry or if you’re thinking about feeding the homeless you already have the seeds of compassion in you. You care and want to get involved. At first you’ll be using your own money and pantry (and with a little luck also those of your friends) to get what you need to take food to the homeless. Whatever it is, it will be enough for a start, because the most important thing is that you do start.

You’ll have cans of soup, spaghetti, fruit, vegetables, chili and other tasty items to distribute. Your homeless clients will pretty much be very glad and grateful you want to help them. They’ll receive the food with appreciation especially if they have children.

And then that day will come, probably sooner than later, when you’re urging someone to fill up their bag that they look at you with sad eyes and tell you thank you, but they can’t take anything because They Don’t Have a Can Opener!!!!!!

How could something so simple bring what you’re doing to a crashing halt? To avoid this situation, because believe us you will feel very, very bad, make sure you always have a few hand crank can openers in your car. You can get them at any grocery or retail store, they don’t take up much room and they are gold to someone who doesn’t have one.

Read more…

October 25, 2014 /// Filed Under: Practical Matters /// Tagged With: Practical Matters

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.

Remembering Linda →

Project Dignity

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

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