All Tips 2 - Project Dignity

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Things aren’t always what they seem. Burn this in your brain. Let it become your mantra. It will save you from leaping before you look, thus averting many potential disasters.

That’s probably good advice for just about any situation life can throw at you, but we’re referring to one in particular that you will encounter thousands of times in the motels before you hang up your grocery bags and pass the baton to a new generation.

As it becomes more apparent to your homeless clients that you are a kind, caring person who will listen, they are going to start talking to you about their problems. They may even ask you outright for help. Be very careful in situations that appear to involve injustices done to your clients, especially by their neighbors, their employers, motel owners or law enforcement. (This is only a short list. The possibilities are endless). Your first inclination will be to leap right in and make whatever’s wrong right, or make it go away to ease things for your client because you can’t stand to see them distressed.

It’s an admirable thought, but before you do anything make sure you have all the facts. It’s human nature to want to be the one “in the right”. We all do it. It’s also human nature to fudge the facts a bit or embellish them. The chances of you having the entire story presented to you truthfully and accurately the first time out is dishearteningly small.

If you take your client’s words at 100% face value and leap into action, you may find the quicksand you land on rapidly sucking you in.

Simple is Better

Keep it simple—it’s better. Time and again when playing games with the children, it is hammered home to me that it’s not how much the game costs that matters, but how much enjoyment it brings.

I comb retail stores, teacher’s supply stores and of course amazon.com for game ideas. There is no lack of games available. The hard part is weeding out the million possibilities to a few purchases. I’ve finally learned the hard way and the expensive way that children don’t care about how much a game costs, or, how many brightly colored pieces it has.

This is important for you too. The more pieces there are the more you can lose. Don’t forget—you’re portable. You need to transport and keep track of all those pieces. The boxes the games come in are going to take a beating by being constantly transported and eventually the box won’t hold the pieces any longer. You need a game that can eventually be contained in zippered baggies and plastic containers. You also don’t want a game that is ruined if you lose one piece.

Ice Cream Social

Today we had an ice cream social—make your own sundaes. Since it was about 90 degrees outside it was a big hit. This is actually a very simple activity to do, with a little preparation and a few extra hands to help.

The main thing you need obviously is the ice cream. Note: Don’t buy it until immediately before the event, unless you have a very large freezer! And, be sure to have an ice chest on hand. The motel we had the ice cream social at actually provides refrigerators for the residents, so we would have been able to store extra ice cream there, but this is the exception, not the rule.

We served a crowd of about 50 children and adults. We did fine with one very large tub and three cartons. There was even some leftover for anyone brave enough to want seconds. Even after Baskin Robbins 31 flavors, vanilla is still the #1 favorite flavor in American. No one refuses it.

Next come the toppings. This is where you can get as creative as you want to. Just walk down the candy, cookie and baking aisles. You’ll get lots of ideas. The possibilities are endless. We used small marshmallows, plain and peanut M & Ms, gummy bears, mixed nuts and sprinkles.

Syrups can be as easy as a couple of bottles of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, or the gamut of flavors available. No matter what flavors you get, get double or triple the chocolate. It’s always going to be the favorite flavor.

Then came the whipped cream. Four large cans took care of everyone. Last of all was the cookies. We chose Oreos. They come in several different flavors now, so they make the perfect ice cream accompaniment—in addition to original you can get golden, double stuff, triple stacked, peanut butter, lemon, raspberry and cookie dough. Heaven!

The set-up is something you want to arrange carefully, to avoid chaos and a sticky mess. Also, do as much prep work as you can before so you don’t have a fidgeting crowd and melting ice cream waiting for you. Put the toppings and cookies in plastic containers, ready to be served from. Put plastic spoons in the toppings so little fingers aren’t tempted to just pluck what looks good. Have lots of napkins, paper towels and wet wipes available. Be sure to bring plastic tablecloths. You’re going to need them!

Have a couple of card tables and place everything on them so people can go down them assembly line style. This keeps the line flowing and helps keep everyone cheerful and patient on a hot day. Assign volunteers to go along with the children or they will pile their bowls as high as they can with whatever they see. The potential waste is less of a problem here than the probability of the child becoming very ill from overeating. And guess who has to deal with that?

Be prepared to have fun. This is one of the most popular events we do and we try to do it several times during the long, hot summer. The sticky hugs and kisses are just a bonus!

Happy Father’s Day, Mom

Today is Father’s Day. We’ve observed many great fathers, doing the best they can for their children and wives, in very, very difficult situations. We see dads who go without new shoes and even without dinner, so their children don’t have to. There is no difference between the love they have for their children and the love of men who have better finances.

However, the irony of the day was the number of moms we ran into today, who are raising their families on their own. For whatever reason, there is no dad in sight. We were impressed by the good job they’re doing. The undisputable truth lies in their children, who evidence their love by holding their mom’s hands, hugging them and making sure to ask for something to eat for their mammas, whenever we bring snacks. They do not forget.

Many of the boys take on a protector’s role of their mother when they are very young. It’s a lesson you wish no child had to learn, but in the end is the responsibility, maturity and kindness they learn really a bad thing?

Although an intact family with two parents is almost always going to be best for a child, these children did not walk around with long faces because they didn’t have a dad on Father’s Day. It barely registered on their little radars. The sunshine of their lives, their moms, were there and that was all they needed today.

So, in honor of Father’s Day, to all the moms who perform both the job of mom and dad, we say with love and admiration, Happy Father’s Day, Mom.

Patience is a Two Way Virtue

Patience is a two way virtue. You teach it and if you’re lucky, you learn it too. We experienced it in action last week. We sat down with the children to do a Father’s Day craft, cleverly orchestrated by the craft lady, “Miss Dawn”. They decorated funny little sports cars and colored a beautiful Father’s Day card worthy of Hallmark. I’ve never heard a group of children so silent. Their total concentration on getting what they were doing absolutely right for their dads was moving. Bent heads, tongues stuck out between teeth and complete attention to coloring within the lines were the order of the day.

One little boy had a “Magic Marker Malfunction”. He was almost done with his dad’s card. He was the last child left and we were just about ready to wrap up the session and go home, when the blue magic marker he was using bled all over his masterpiece. He’s a quiet child so he didn’t make a fuss, but we saw what had happened and asked him if he wanted to start over again. He said “yes”, so we handed him a clean card and settled in because he is the most meticulous of all the children. We knew we were in for a wait.

Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken

Sometimes, rules have to be broken. That probably sounds like a heretical statement when so much of this website and blog content concentrate on helping you “stay within the navigational beacons”. However, there will be times when you need to circumvent the rules if a client in need is going to be served in the best and most loving way.

We received a call from a client we’ve helped many times. We’ll call her “Sandra” (name changed). The needs were always legitimate because she’s a young single mother of two sweet little girls, and she has cancer. She has no family at all here. They are all in another state and are very poor themselves. It appeared however that we had become too convenient for Sandra, so the brakes had to be applied.

The last time Sandra was in need we paid her rent for two weeks, made sure her family had enough to eat and paid her cell phone bill. We told her to use those two weeks and the paid cell phone to concentrate on building up a list of resources other than Project Dignity to fall back on and that the next time a need arose she needed to call someone else. We wouldn’t be able to help her. We’re very small. If we pour out all our resources on a few families, a lot of others don’t get the help we should be providing.

Sandra placed an urgent call to us this morning. She was going to be locked out of her room at 11 because she was two days short on the rent. We hear this over and over again and yet somehow our clients manage to hold on even when we can’t help them. I decided to see what Sandra could come up with. I knew that she at least had a car they could sleep in if it came to that.

I’d had a tiring day and decided to make Sandra my last call before I got some rest. I called Sandra on her cell phone and she answered—from the front of the motel where she stood locked out with her two little girls. The manager had actually done it. She had tried all day to get help. Had walked for miles to places that might be able to help and had struck out. And, she no longer had a car because the timing belt had broken. I wished her well and terminated the conversation. Then, I sat there, and sat.

Know When to Say When

Know when to say when. It’s sad to think about, but there may come a time when you need to stop serving at a particular motel for a while, or worse yet, leave it altogether. This should only happen in the most extreme conditions, but it can happen. The most obvious one is if you find yourself and your volunteers in danger beyond your control. If this happens, you leave and live to serve another day, at another motel.

Another untenable situation can occur when you’ve been serving at a particular motel for a while and the residents begin to take your services for granted. They expect you to pay their rent, give them gift cards, bring them food, etc. and become testy and abusive if you don’t “grant all their wishes”.

This can occur if you’re too quick to solve problems or jump right in to fill needs without letting your clients have the dignity of thinking through their problems themselves. Why should your clients find other resources if you’re always popping up, taking care of everything? You’ve not only made them very comfortable where they are, you may also have taken away their incentive to be anywhere else. You have crippled them.

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Simple is Better

Ice Cream Social

Happy Father’s Day, Mom

Patience is a Two Way Virtue

Sometimes, Rules have to be Broken

Know When to Say When

A tribute to our Founder

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