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Yahoo! grant helps San Francisco cathedral serve meals to Tenderloin residents
"This is the best event we've had. Everyone was very appreciative," said Chatman, 50, who along with 50 other residents of the single room occupancy (SRO) hotel dined on jambalaya, cheese biscuits and a variety of desserts. It was part of "Dinner with Grace", an outreach ministry of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral and Episcopal Community Services (ECS).
Until this week, volunteers for the two-year-old program had cooked, delivered and eaten meals with residents of the Mentone, a nearby SRO hotel. But a $5,000 grant from the Yahoo! Employee Foundation (YEF) made it possible to add the Coast Hotel too, with the first hot meal served up Wednesday evening, said the Rev. Will Scott, associate pastor and a Dinner with Grace founder.
"The neat thing about Dinner with Grace (DWG) is we have a whole variety of people coming together and sharing a meal, carrying the eucharistic idea into these buildings which are themselves unique spaces," said Scott, during a telephone interview.
Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California (which only includes San Francisco and environs) said in a statement that the program attempts to address one of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals, which is "to eradicate hunger and poverty from the planet by the year 2015. It's our aim to make a small, yet significant contribution at the local level through Dinner with Grace."
The Yahoo! grant will help feed twice as many formerly homeless people as last year, and will help in "creating avenues of conversation, and bridges of support, which will transform lives."
Deepening relationship is key, said Scott. "This is doing what the church has always done, provided hospitality. The uniqueness of this program is that we're working with an agency (ECS). It works because we care. The people are here because they want to be."
A core team of about 16 volunteer workers oversees scheduling, grocery shopping, finances and meal planning, preparation and delivery, Scott said. Overall, about 60 people from Grace, other organizations and the SROs, volunteer regularly.
The ministry receives about $2,400 yearly from the cathedral budget; the grant will enable purchase of a freezer and refrigerator and much-needed cooking equipment, Scott said.
Since YEF was founded in 1999, the employee-driven grassroots philanthropic organization has provided over $7.6 million in grants to nonprofit organizations. Employees donate the money and the organizations they champion are eligible to receive the grants.
Yahoo! employee Rumena Manolova, a Grace parishioner, helped apply for the DWG grant and is a key organizer of the program, according to a media release. DWG offers a fresh, nutritious alternative to residents, whose "low-nutrition diet compounds many health problems they have developed from years of living on the street," she said. She is also conducting a nutrition survey of residents to learn about their health needs.
The YEF grant will also help in longer-term strategizing, Scott said. "Our dream is that every week we would have people from the cathedral and the wider community providing meals in SROs in the Tenderloin," he said. "Hopefully this can work elsewhere as a model of how churches can reach out to lower-income people. ECS manages about ten hotels and we hope to add other hotels yearly.
"We want to make sure that what we're doing in these buildings is fostering care, looking in one another's eyes, with a sense of respect and breaking down some barriers of isolation," he added.
It boils down to "compassionate socialization," said Phil Swenson, support services manager at the Mentone.
"So often times people who live within the Tenderloin are isolated, alone. For a considerable amount of time it has been one of the poorer, more crime-ridden areas, a limited world. But the outreach of Grace breaks through those social barriers and really creates a kind of family atmosphere."
The Mentone is a 68-unit hotel, 1-1/2 blocks from the Coast Hotel, and about a mile from Grace Cathedral, with residents about 45 to 70 years of age, he said. Rooms may have microwaves or small refrigerators, but no kitchens. Residents share community bathrooms.
Dinner with Grace offers consistency, he said. "The tenants look forward to Grace volunteers coming. They have a high number of consistent volunteers, so they are able to put a name with a face. These aren't just volunteers, or clients … they look forward to the visit of a friend. It puts a whole different flavor into the outreach itself."
Some tenants, like Linda P. (who declined to give her last name) volunteer at the Cathedral as cooks. "We were very excited," she said after Wednesday's meal. "I was on the dessert team. We made M&M cookies and oatmeal cookies and gingerbread squares."
Wednesday's meal meant a great deal, added the 58-year-old. "My birthday is tomorrow (Thursday) and it felt like a pre-birthday celebration," she said. "We got to sit and eat as one big family. We enjoyed talking with the youngsters from Grace Cathedral."
After she was "displaced through a divorce, I started living in a shelter," she said. Eventually, she found her way to Episcopal Community Services, which placed her at the Coast Hotel. She receives financial help through the county General Assistance Program, which allows her affordable housing, she said.
Wednesday evening's sense of community "was heart-warming," she added. "It brought back memories of the first year I was homeless and Grace Cathedral invited the homeless to participate in the Christmas service. I got to read the Scripture. I feel like part of the Grace Cathedral family."
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