Have you guys heard of the Purple Bus? An Atlanta mom is currently on a national tour talking to people about healthcare. She was recently in the Central Valley educating folks about healthcare reform. According to her website, tomorrow she will be in San Francisco. Just another mom doing her part!
Anyone out there have an Airstream trailer a couple moms could borrow to take their wild toddlers on a tour of California?
Now that Mother’s Day is over, the word on the street is that everything goes back to business as usual. We certainly hope not, but as someone close to our campaign told me, “after Mother’s Day NO ONE in the media is going to be interested in your diaper drive.”
According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, not since the Great Depression have so many families been without a home. We may not see them in the tent cities that are scattered around the country and reported on in USA Today. If they are not newsworthy enough for the evening news, it does not mean that they don’t exist.
Many homeless families cannot be accounted for. They are hidden in the nation’s motel rooms,doubled up in single room occupancy hotels, living out of their cars, or couch surfing with friends and family while they wait for an opening in a homeless shelter. What is particularly arresting is that in some areas of California, after families have“graduated” from a homeless shelter’s program (e.g.,St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children), they have NOWHERE else to turn.
Please watch this video of David, Tish, and Natasha, interviewed by Mark Horvath ofInvisiblePeople.tv, at the Prado Day Center in San Luis Obispo. They do their best to raise their 15 month old daughter in the shelter system, while also helping out other homeless folks. Inspiring.
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4569947]
There are more than a million of these little stories across America that remain untold and hidden from our view. There are families just like this one who are in your own community.
If you are laid off or underemployed shut down the pity party before it gets out of control. Do something. It doesn’t take much to contribute your own gifts in your own community.
BIG THANK YOU to all of you who honored that special mom in your life, with a gift in kind donation via our Amazon.com wishlists. Together we have already made a very PRACTICAL, DIRECT, and BIG difference in the lives of homeless and very low income mothers and their babies this Mother’s Day. PLEASE TELL US how the gift card went over with mom and POST A COMMENT below. The Amazon.com wishlist delivery process is working and supplies have already begun helping out mothers-in-need across the state.
THANKS to all of our friends, family, colleagues, fellow bloggers, Facebook friends, Tweeps, and the folks at KGO Newstalk Radio AM810, who helped us out with spreading the wordabout our Mother’s Day gift card offer.
DONATE THROUGH MAY 31ST: If you are just learning about us and our drive, it is NOT TOO LATE to get in on the fun. You can still participate in our VIRTUAL DIAPER DRIVE, HOST A DRIVE, or DONATE IN PERSON in your own community.
CHECK OUT other ways to help us out in MAY by reading this.
MAKE IT FUN! Involve the kids in the donation. Have them help you collect items from your own household and take them with you to drop them off.
We just learned from one of our south bay agencies that the Bay Area Diaper Bank recently closed after only a year in service. This is very sad because the agencies they were working with (in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties) are now out of a consistent diaper supply for their clients.
Even if you don’t wish to donate via our administered Amazon.com wishlists, please remember that there are agencies in your own town that could really use diapers. Here is a link to diaper banks around the country.
HAMO donation drive: OPEN PACKAGES of diapers and feminine hygiene products are GREAT! If your baby recently upgraded to a larger size, please save the smaller diapers! To donate: Keep them in their original packaging or in a labeled ziploc bag. Drop off at one of our drop off locations.
Bloggers & Supporters: Would you do us the honor and wear our badge?
At the suggestion and help of local blogger extraordinaire, Whitney Moss of RookieMoms.com, we now have a nifty badge you can put up on your website/blog.
Help a mom-in-need, spread the word! Please come back and tell us here if you posted it up on your site so we can stop by for a visit.
Heard of RookieMoms.com? They are a great resource for finding activities to do with your new baby and toddler all over the Bay Area and beyond. Click them some love! And hey, check out their book .We hear it is going to be translated into German!
We’ll be getting a jump-start on our Mother’s Day celebrations this Friday at San Francisco City Hall. We’re not affiliated with these folks, but we’ll be there to lend our support. Please join us to show some solidarity and send Mayor Newsom the message that his lack of response to the homeless crisis is not okay.
MEDIA ADVISORY
MOTHER’S HOLD MOTHER’S DAY PRESS CONFERENCE ON THE ECONOMICAL DOWN TURN
Where: Steps of City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place, San Francisco
When: Friday, May 8, 2009, 11:00
What: Homeless mothers are holding a press conference to decry the lack of response from the Mayor’s office on the doubling of homeless families in San Francisco since the recession.
San Francisco—San Francisco, like cities across the nation, is seeing a dramatic spike in the number of families requesting emergency shelter. The city of San Francisco has enough homeless families to fill a small, rapidly growing town. Yet, this issue has received very loud silence coming out of the Mayor’s office.
According to Connecting Point, in the summer of 2007, the average number of homeless families waiting to be placed into shelters was 75. In the summer of 2008, that average doubled to 150 families. Since then, there have been anywhere from 150 to 190 families waiting to be placed into shelters. The recession has taken a tremendous toll on our low-income families, and homeless families are calling on the Mayor’s office to respond.
Studies have show that homelessness has negative impacts on our youth’s health, development and education. Mother’s are becoming more and more concerned for their children’s well being.. They are in awe at the fact that the city has not responded to the tragic outcome of our recession. Homeless parents will be presenting their solutions and will be asking for a meeting with the Mayor. Homeless parents active with the Coalition on Homelessness have been calling for a meeting with the Mayor for the past two years, and have not been granted one.
For Mother’s Day, the mothers of the homeless community would like to spend their day securing their children’s future. Homeless parents will be calling for additional affordable housing units, a lifting of the time limit on a locally funded housing subsidy, and increased homeless prevention funding. San Francisco has adopted the “Housing First” policy which was created to swiftly house homeless single adults. The mother’s are fed up with the lack of action from City Hall, and are demanding that the “Housing First” policy that was adopted by San Francisco be implemented for families in their time of need.
According to Jenise Standfield of SRO Families United, “Our families need real “rapid housing”not “rapid homelessness”!
Dear HAMO Readers,
Mother’s Day is May 10th, less that a week away. This year we are campaigning for people to do something different for the special moms in your life. Some call it “reclaiming Mother’s Day.” Others call it “alternative Mother’s Day.” We call it “the right thing to do.”
According to the National Center on Family Homelessness: California has 2.2 million children living in poverty. Of those children, approximately 292,624 are homeless.
Please consider helping a mother-in-need out this year in YOUR OWN COMMUNITY (tip: top right hand corner of our website, click to find a wishlist near you! ). From now until midnight, Friday May 8th, email us (helpamotherout at gmail dot com) your proof of purchase off of one of ouradministered Amazon.com wishlists and we’ll send you a swell e-gift card to give to your Mother’s Day honoree.
Other ways to participate in our May Donation Campaign:
Please join us in helping keep moms-in-need and their children healthy.
HAMO
We really need the help spreading the word. Please tell your friends and family! The donation drive is happening all the month of May!
Welcome KGO Newstalk Radi0 810 AM listeners! Click through (look top right hand corner) to one of our administered Amazon.com wishlists, email helpamotherout at gmail dot com your proof of purchase, and we’ll send along your Mother’s Day e-card (act by midnight May 8th).
Tip: Remember to choose FREE SUPER SAVER SHIPPING on orders over $25.
HAMO sends a huge THANK YOU to the Afternoon News team at KGO for giving us the opportunity to reach your listeners and tell them our message and Mother’s Day offer.
The question we asked when we started out:
“How can YOU and your family help out others in your community?”
We’ve done just about all we can do on our end. HAMO really needs YOUR help. We can’t do it alone. Here are some ideas for you to support our May Donation Drive Campaign:
We are for real. This is not a joke. Ask our moms. Forget that, ask our husbands and kids. If you know us IRL, stop by and see our messy kitchens (please call first).
As Tangobaby said, “we can do great things.”
Can you help some mothers out?
Dear Glinda,
If you haven’t already, please stop by Tangobaby’s place to read up on Mama K’s story. She could really use the help navigating through the San Francisco shelter labyrinth. Or at least, a meeting with Mayor Newsom to talk about his Care Not Cash success. It looks like there might be an ever so slightdisconnect between what we are reading in the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle and Mama K’s current situation.
Please help her.
Yours always,
HAMO
Breaking news from HAMO headquarters:
Lisa’s very own “mother’s helper,” high school freshman, Miss K. will be hosting a bake sale at her high school next week. The bake sale will benefit Brighter Beginnings, one of our partnering agencies. Miss K came up with the bake sale idea as a way to raise funds to purchase supplies offBrighter Beginnings Amazon.com wishlist. She figured that she probably wouldn’t yield much from her classmates by asking them to bring in their parents’ hotel soaps, or um, bring diapers to school, but she really wanted to support HAMO’s May Donation Drive.
We think this is a fabulous and inspiring idea! Thank you, Miss K, for thinking “outside the box,” when it comes to helping others out in your own community.
Miss K has promised us photos from the bake sale. Stay tuned!
Do you know about The Lemon Lady?
The Lemon Lady recently found HAMO by way of Tangobaby’s blog. The Lemon Lady is an east bay stay-at-home mom on a “one woman campaign against hunger.” She is helping to feed the hungry by donating fresh-from-the-garden produce to her local food banks. What an inspiration!
Avid gardners everywhere: why not plant an extra row of veggies to harvest for your local food bank? Also consider collecting bounty from your other gardening friends. HAMO certainly will be.
All Day FUN for just $2.50 – SadieDey’s Café Grand Re-Opening Party
Congrats to Sue Older and her team on the new name and Grand Re-Opening!
Today only, donate HAMO supplies and receive $1.00 off admission to SadieDey’s Cafe Grand Re-Opening Party.
The HAMO “interns” will be there in the morning, prior to naptime. Come join them!
Big thanks to Sue Older, and everyone at SadieDey’s Cafe, for supporting our cause and May donation drive. Our beautiful big blue bin is waiting for your donations at SadieDey’s Cafe through May 31st.
Just a week ago, we came across a blog post by Julie, aka TangoBaby, that truly inspired us. Using the tools at her disposal—a camera, a blog, and a big dose of compassion—Julie got the story of one homeless woman’s struggle out to San Francisco, and to the world. The response of individuals has been incredible, although the city bureaucracy is still stumbling to keep up and provide the needed services to Mama K and her family. We’re thrilled to have Julie guest post for us. Read on to hear her story.
Two weeks ago today, something happened that changed my life forever.
I think it’s a rare and magical thing to be able to look at a date on a calendar and think to yourself:Yes, on this day, I became a better person.
I’m just glad that date happened to me sooner than later.
by tangobaby
Two weeks ago today, I passed by a young homeless woman on the streets of San Francisco, her eyes large and tear-filled. Holding a baby, with a small boy on one side of her and a little girl on the other, she needed $60 dollars for a motel room.
I walked by.
I often walk by people begging for money. We all do. We set up these automatic shields. If we gave away all of our money to everyone that asked us to, what would we have?
The truth is that we might have even more than we gave. I would have never been able to say that to you over two weeks ago, but I can say it now.
by tangobaby
The good news is that this time, I thought about the sight that I had seen, and thought that it was so terribly terribly wrong that I would not have been able to sleep had I not turned back. My protective bubble had burst.
And in so doing, returning to that woman and her children, a whole sad world opened to me. A world I have never encountered: a world of savage cruelty inflicted by someone bigger and stronger, someone who should have cared and protected but only harmed, with malice. But it’s also a world of love and strength, the true measure of a woman’s love for her family, who would do what she could for her children no matter how unsure the future seemed.
K and her children are a joy to be around. They are definitely a unit, bound by love, to each other. In this short span of two weeks, the world has reached out to help this family where a city could not. I am amazed at how the situation changes moment by moment.
I can only be inspired by the good will and love that people around the world, connected by electronic threads of compassion, have woven around this tiny family. Money, clothing, toys, this and more await this family. They are not out of the woods yet, by any means. They still need reliable shelter for months to come. But I am hopeful that their days of struggle and tears and cold nights have passed forever. If you can help, please do.
These children are our future. This mother is the only one they will ever have.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.
With love,
Julie
Keep updated on K’s story at TangoBaby.
Julie lives in San Francisco. She writes two SF based blogs, tangobaby and i live here: SF. As a self-taught photographer, she enjoys focusing on the sights and people of this city she loves.
Busy day ahead for HAMO, which includes running after toddlers, bringing home some bacon, and getting out our FIRST ever news release!
We were emailed this interesting piece on Sacramento’s Tent City, written by Robert V. Tobin ofCottage Housing, Inc. in Chicago. Check it out. Here is an excerpt:
Several suggestions might move us further and faster in the right direction:
Ignore the “magnet effect:” This persistent myth only undermines our efforts to provide comprehensive, cost-effective and, yes, compassionate solutions to homelessness. Anecdotal evidence supported the mistaken view that Sacramento’s encampment was attracting homeless people from around the nation. However, research here and elsewhere is consistent with an extensive 2006 study that found more than three-quarters of the thousands of homeless people surveyed were still living in the community where they became homeless.
Avoid so-called temporary responses: Trailers on school playgrounds were called “temporary” classrooms before they became “portables,” even though they never move. Likewise, emergency shelters and tent cities that are presented as temporary inevitably become permanent. Approaching homelessness as if it were a short-term catastrophe like a flood is itself a recipe for disaster; yet a primary funder is none other than the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Say good-bye to Horatio Alger: His rags-to-riches stories from the late 1800s shaped our society’s view that achievement results from diligent effort, and failure from the opposite. But examinging the circumstances of latter-day cultural icons from the Beatles to Bill Gates, Malcolm Gladwell debunks this model of personal success. His latest book,Outliers, cites researchers who tracked highly intelligent people for decades. Their conclusion: accomplishment is “less about talent than about opportunity.”
Change the rules: Federal policy and funding concentrates on the chronically homeless in a way that denies homeless parents with children the equal protections afforded by the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Another misguided regulation makes homeless people with addictions who do not pursue residential treatment eligible for long-term housing programs and rent subsidies; those who do seek such treatment are denied access to those resources.
Thoughts on these suggestions? Post your comments below.
Also, DONATE something off the Amazon.com wishlist of your choice and help out a mother in need.Mother’s Day is May 10th. Remember our gift card offer! Your mom will think you are SO SWEET!
Imagine trying to get you and your three children into a battered women’s shelter everyday, only to be told that they have no room for you. Can’t try a regular homeless shelter because they won’t take you if you are a domestic abuse survivor. This is what has been happening to Mama K everyday of her ordeal. Check out the news segment and read Tangobaby’s post about it.
An official from San Francisco’s Department of Human Services has offered to help Mama K with obtaining safe housing for her and her three kids. Send him an email (deleted) and let him know that you watched the segment. Tell him you are concerned for Mama K’s family and also for all of the other homeless families in San Francisco.
Calling all SF Bay Area, Sacramento and San Diego business owners, Bloggers, Tweeters, eCommerce folks, and beyond:
Would you like to support a local organization working directly with homeless/low income mothers-in-need? If so, please consider a tax deductible gift-in-kind donation to one of the organizationswe are working with. Purchase items off of one of our administered Amazon.com wishlists (look to the RIGHT —>), email us (helpamotherout at gmail dot com) the proof, and let us publicly THANK YOU on Mother’s Day right here on Help A Mother Out’s website.
Check out the virtual donation drive here.
Buy moms-in-need something they can REALLY use. Do it directly. Do it TODAY.
And then you can say you knew us before we were “kinda a Big Deal.” ACT by Midnight May8th.
This in from Tangobaby: San Francisco ABC affiliate KGO 7 was slated to air Mama K’s story tonight on the 6 O’clock news. Unfortunately, the swine flu in Marin County upstaged her story. Please keep Mama K in your thoughts tonight and remember that it takes a village to raise a child.
Hopefully, her story will air tomorrow night, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at 6pm on ABC channel 7news. Please tune in or set the DVR. The segment should be able to stream after it airs.
We’ve been in contact with Tangobaby asking if we can help Kelaya with essential supplies she may need for 2 month old Baby M. The good news is that she now has a refrigerator(donated by an East Bay blogger) to store breastmilk in her motel room. Can you imagine, being homeless with 2 older children and a 2 month old baby?
What is unique about Mama K’s story is that a perfect stranger, Tangobaby, decided to take it upon herself to help this mother of three on the streets. She passed her on the streets, and then turned back around to help. How many of us can say that we would do that?
Thank you, Tangobaby. You are our hero.
Here is a local story that we were made aware of by SFist.com. All the shelters are full in the city. It appears that Mama K has found temporary shelter in a motel. If you are a local and can help Mama K find a job and/or home for herself and her three children (including 2 month old Baby M), please read the updates on Tangobaby’s blog. Sadly, Mama K’s story is increasingly common, even in our bubble by the bay.
As a side note: it was pretty hard for us to find adequate information about homeless shelters and other social services on the Internet. Imagine trying to do this with 3 kids in tow on the streets.
We’re thrilled to have provided inspiration for TucsonMama’s Mother’s Day donation drive to benefit the Diaper Bank of Southern Arizona, the nation’s first diaper bank. TucsonMama is a great resource for Tuscon-area parents, dishing up hot tips on local goings-on and offering a forum for networking and support.
We heart TucsonMama and hope their drive is a resounding success. Send some love their way!
A special thanks and dorky high-five to Tucson mama and friend o’ mine Rachel M., who’s orchestrating this drive all the way from Florence, Italy.