Jesse: Serving Those Who Serve Our Country

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqglmY8rIC4]

After returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jesse, a veteran, struggled to pay rent as he searched for a full time job. Heartland Alliance provided the help his family needed to stay housed and stable – rental assistance, budgeting training, and connections to well-paid full time job opportunities. Today he’s an admissions advisor at a local college – the well-paid, full-time job he’d always dreamed of. He’s proud to say he provides for his family and that he knows their stability is here to stay.

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Jesse.

Harvey: Educating The Community, Educating Lawmakers

“I’ve got some names for you right here!” Harvey pulled several dog eared pages out of his coat pocket, extended them with a shaky hand and grinned. “I think I got ‘bout every one.”

The pages, full of signatures from residents in his building supporting a motion to raise the Illinois minimum wage, were the result of two weeks of knocking on doors. A retired serviceman and a resident of one of Heartland Alliance’s supportive housing facilities in Uptown, Harvey knows what it means to try to live on pennies a day. And now that he’s gotten back on his feet with some help from Heartland Alliance, he made up his mind to pay it forward, saying “actions speak larger than words, so I’m gonna take action to make things better [for others].”

Twelve years ago, Harvey’s life was very different – his future looked bleak. A sick, homeless, veteran with no one to turn to, he had resigned himself to a future spending his nights under overpasses and his days in empty lots. Heartland Alliance found him under one of those overpasses and placed him into a housing unit in Uptown. Next came health care to get his health under control and support while he navigated the paperwork involved in filing for SSDI benefits.

“Heartland [Alliance] found me. I was lost, you see.” He pauses to wipe his eye and take a sip of his coffee before he smoothes his papers. “I’m going to help them now, and help people like me”

Two weeks ago, Harvey took his tenth trip to offer that help the best way he knew how –  he took a trip to Springfield with Heartland Alliance’s Policy & Advocacy Team. He wanted to let legislators know what cuts to social service budgets would do – to let them know that it was only because of the social services Heartland Alliance provides that he had regained his life, his health, and his happiness.

“He caught the bug right away – he was bringing pages of signatures from his community by the second trip. Harvey is a dyed-in-the-wool community organizer” laughed Kim Drew, Policy Associate at Heartland Alliance as she examined the lovingly hand collected signatures. She’ll use them on her next trip to Springfield, this time to advocate for an increase to the Illinois minimum wage. It’s a long, tough battle, but she knows that nothing impacts lawmakers more than hand-written support from their constituents. Harvey will be with her that, too, hand delivering those dog eared pages and helping lawmakers understand how important it is to have help, hope, and support as you stabilize your life.

“Now when I go down [to Springfield] the people in the capitol, they know me by name and they know what I’m about,” he says proudly. “This is how I can make things better, like Heartland Alliance did for me.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Harvey.

Menuka: The Most Beautiful Place

Menuka, a refugee from Bhutan, was raised in what she calls “the most beautiful place”. In the shadows of the Himalayan mountains her family made their living as farmers, growing beautiful vegetables amongst the lush grass and fertile soil.

It was in the 1990s that her life changed dramatically, when Nepali families who had fled conflict into Bhutan were driven out in the name of ethnic purity. Menuka and her family were forced into a refugee camp, where they stayed for 18 years.

Homesick and fearful, Menuka sought out a source of comfort and found it in a small patch of land within the refugee camp. She tended it with great care, growing whatever small plants the land would yield. It was in 2008 that her application for US refugee status was approved and she left the refugee camp – and her garden – behind to relocate to Chicago.

“When I got here, I saw concrete. Just over all the ground, there was concrete. I was so sad,” said Menuka of her first days here. “This place was nothing like Bhutan, what would I do here?”

To help Menuka adjust to her new life, she was connected to Heartland Alliance’s Refugee Health Program, which specializes in helping refugees build healthy, safe lives in their new homeland.

“In Bhutan, she and her family were farmers and we are fortunate to be able to provide a beautiful rooftop garden here” says Erin Hantke, who oversees the program. “Menuka was one of our original gardeners when we were first able to provide garden plots to refugees five years ago. It gives our gardeners a little bit of home here.”

After five months this growing season, Menuka’s garden looks much like it once did in Bhutan. She has peppers and tomatoes, eggplant and beans, as well as bitter melon – a vegetable native to her home country and essential to traditional, healthy Bhutanese cooking. The vegetables themselves aren’t the true harvest, though.

“These vegetables and food remind me of my home. My family, we were farmers. I’m keeping my skills and traditions alive.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Menuka.

Monica: Housing Helps End Poverty

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbOu6RmMlmg]

Without a safe place to call home, it’s nearly impossible to stabilize one’s life. Last year, we matched nearly 12,000 individuals and families to housing that fit their unique needs, working collaboratively with participants to help them transition to permanent housing and stay successfully housed.

It’s a holistic approach that works. Today, we’re taking it on the road, helping shape policies that impact thousands, sharing our models with new communities, and leading the nation’s effort to prevent and end homelessness—permanently.

Watch Monica’s story to learn about how finding housing changed her life.

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Monica.

Juan: Helping Uninsured Chicagoans Get Covered

For many, Saturday morning is a time to sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast with the children, and relax from a long week’s work. Not so for Juan, an In Person Counselor with Heartland Alliance, charged with connecting people to health insurance they can afford. On a typical Saturday morning, dozens of people come to his community events, hoping to finally get covered. He makes it happen.

“People tell me ‘I know I have this disease, I’ve had it for years but I can’t afford to go to the doctor,’” he says of his work. “Insurance is very expensive, we all know this. Many people, they make very little money and they can’t pay for this, so their health just gets worse and worse.”

Many resisted this help getting healthcare at first. Even though people knew they needed care, many were suspicious, and when the Affordable Care Act went into effect, too many of the people most in need weren’t being reached. As the polar vortex descended on Chicago, Juan began going door to door, reaching out to areas with low enrollment rates. There’s nothing to fear, he told them. You can afford this. You don’t have to get sick, or stay sick. Let’s get you well.

“People had a lot of doubt. Insurance is very complicated and people have been burned many times before by the healthcare system. It just hasn’t worked for them,” he says. “It’s a process of building trust with people.”

So why do this difficult, slow moving work? Why, during one of Chicago’s most ferocious winters, go door to door, community to community, convincing people to believe in this system? Isn’t it enough to have given people access where before they had none? As it turns out, the human connection – someone to answer your questions, address your fears, and show you how to get what you both need and can afford – is truly the key.

“We are going where nobody has been helping people and we have the power to change peoples’ lives,” says Juan. “I met one couple, a husband and a wife, and I remember them even now. The husband worked full time, but was in a car accident, a hit and run. He was suspended from his factory job and could not work. They were both on his health insurance, which was cut off. So they had to make a choice, do they pay for the COBRA health coverage, or do they pay their mortgage? We were able to find them a very affordable health plan that could address his health needs and cover them both. That’s why we need to do this work. This family needed us, and we were there.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help support our work.

Heartland Alliance Marjorie Kovler Center relies on an extensive volunteer network, numbering nearly 200, to provide essential services to survivors of torture. From interpreting and accompaniments, to therapy and psychiatry, our work would not be the same without their commitment and partnership.

Selma is a master’s degree student of Clinical Psychology and part of the first generation of refugees who arrived as children and are educated in the U.S. The start of her volunteering coincided with a wave of referrals of Bosnian couples and individuals who are suffering long-term effects of trauma, war and dislocation.

Selma interpreted for the intake of a woman likely to be near her mother’s age, and they developed a strong trusting relationship, together with the staff provider. Selma shared that initially she did not think herself emotionally capable of working with survivors and had been fearful about how she would do hearing these stories that close to home, but her experience at Kovler has completely changed her mind. Participating in a treatment model that is client-focused and strengths-based has demonstrated the hopeful side of working with survivors. She now considers making it her career focus.

The Kovler Center staff and volunteer team thanks, Selma, for taking a chance and finding fertile ground for personal and professional growth while helping survivors connect with a community of healing.

Lisa: Investing in Herself

Most of us think of saving as the opposite of spending. Not so says Lisa, a recent graduate of Heartland Alliance’s money management training program.

“The trick is to pay yourself first,” she says. “When you get your paycheck, the first account you pay on is your savings account. Learning that changed how I look at money.”

The mother of a teenage daughter, Lisa had always saved here and there, but she had a hard time maintaining it. She had a stable job and was able to provide for her family but she felt stuck, unable to save for the house she dreamed of and always living paycheck to paycheck.

“Something would always pop up and I’d have to dip into my savings,” Lisa says. “I learned that if I managed my money better, I’d have enough to go around without touching my savings, and that’s what Heartland [Alliance] taught me to do.”

As a part of the program, Lisa participated in workshops on debt management, building credit and spending habits while learning to create a personalized budgeting plan that would meet her needs. To help participants start off on the right foot, Heartland Alliance also matched the money she saved during the program, which she used to pay off her credit card and student loan debt.

Today, she’s watching her budget and carefully planning for her future – and teaching her daughter to do the same.

“She has a good job now, so I’ve given her the ‘financial commandments’,” Lisa says. I don’t want her to have to learn about finances the hard way, like I did. I’m using what I learned [through Heartland Alliance] to help her start off on the right foot.”

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Lisa.

 

Vital Bridges Center on Chronic Care is home to one of the largest and most committed volunteer corps in Heartland Alliance. Some volunteers have served with Vital Bridges since its beginnings 25 years ago as Open Hand Chicago, and others joined as the organization grew and merged into Heartland Alliance Health. But no matter when they began, all of Vital Bridges’ 350+ volunteers share a dedication to the program’s mission: helping people throughout metropolitan Chicago impacted by HIV and AIDS build their health and improve their self-sufficiency.

One of those trusted Vital Bridges volunteers was Michael McGuire.  Michael began his volunteer role with Vital Bridges ten years ago as a “shopper” at the North Side Grocery Land, fulfilling orders for the fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other foods for participants.  But over time, Michael became the go-to volunteer for manning the front desk, explaining procedures, reviewing paperwork, and interacting with participants.

The participants who walk through Vital Bridges’ doors face struggles with their health, housing, and financial situations.  Michael connected and empathized with all of them, but he also wasn’t afraid to employ tough love.  To him, the pantry was a community and a family, and he took his role very seriously.  Even with his fluctuating health, he always found time to chat with participants, fellow volunteers, and staff members, and he rarely missed any of his shifts.  “Michael was very proud to be part of that elite corps of folks whose mission was service with compassion,” says Lori Cannon, Food Program Coordinator and co-founder of the grocery program. 

On January 5, 2014, Michael passed away suddenly from a heart attack.  The news came as shock to everyone, especially the volunteers who had served with Michael every Tuesday and Thursday for years.  Participants were similarly shocked and saddened to hear about the loss.  “He was a favorite amongst our clients, known for his humor and ‘take no prisoners’ approach.  We’ve lost an important member of our family,” added Lori.

In honor of National Volunteer Month, Vital Bridges would like to honor Michael McGuire for his tireless and dedicated service to the program and everyone with whom he worked.  Without volunteers like Michael, Vital Bridges would not succeed.  Thank you for your service, Michael – you will be missed.

Sebastian: Where I’m From, It’s Illegal to be Gay

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI1UdL-f0AE?list=PL1gcrytZhJ3FgdOajYs42Pl2ozEWu0u0h]

Once Sebastian escaped the middle east, he found himself in America without anyone to trust. Through Heartland Alliance International’s Rainbow Welcome Initiative, he connected with other LGBT refugees, made friends, and built a home in his new homeland. Now he helps other LGBT refugees do the same.

Learn more about the Rainbow Welcome Initiative »
Learn more about Heartland Alliance International »

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Aylin.

Meg: Finding Comfort and a Place to Belong

A privileged upbringing in one of Chicago’s wealthier suburbs couldn’t keep Meg — who started using cocaine at age 16 — safe from the problems of drug use that would rule much of her adult life. Battling mental health challenges, including bipolar disorder, from an early age, Meg struggled with bulimia and anorexia and turned to drugs as a way to make herself feel good, even if, as she says, it was only for “fifteen and a half seconds.”

Meg has experienced sporadic homelessness over the past decade and today, in her mid-40s, she still struggles with occasional drug use. But, she says, the support she receives from Heartland Alliance, both permanent housing and mental health and addictions treatment, is helping her get to a point where “every day, drugs become less desirable.”

To help care for Meg’s physical and emotional needs, a nurse practitioner from Heartland Alliance visits weekly to ensure she gets adequate nutrition and support while she battles her eating disorders. A psychiatrist and therapist help her with mental health issues, including food phobias and healing from domestic violence. Case managers oversee her care and help her apply for the government support and medical care for which she is eligible due to her disabilities.

But, Meg says, she gets more than services from the people who work for Heartland Alliance. She gets a sense of belonging and comfort she hasn’t known most of her adult life.

“I know now that I am not alone in this crazy world,” says Meg.

How You Can Help

Donate » Help Us End Poverty

Heartland Alliance—the leading anti-poverty organization in the Midwest— believes that all of us deserve the opportunity to improve our lives. Each year, we help ensure this opportunity for nearly one million people around the world who are homeless, living in poverty, or seeking safety.

Please consider making a donation today to help others like Meg.