Bread for the City

Last Wednesday evening, a few Bread-for-the-Citizens attended the National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day Service in the sanctuary of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. The event happens annually in D.C. on the longest night of the year, the eve of the winter solstice, and commemorates those who have lost their lives to poverty and homelessness.After a number of prayers, songs, readings and other remarks, a speaker from the National Coalition for the Homeless read the names of those who’d died in and around DC while homeless in 2011. Candles commemorating them were lit and extinguished. Before a closing prayer, final remarks were delivered by Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Donovan’s remarks were hopeful in tone, and it was encouraging to see a cabinet-level official attend an event with just a few dozen people. He spoke of the country’s progress in combating homelessness, especially among veterans, and proclaimed his and the Obama administration’s support for all those who fight to end homelessness.

He focused particularly on the success story of one Veteran. Homeless after returning from duty, this man eventually turned his life around to become a case manager at the very institution that once helped him. He is now attending school to become a certified addictions counselor.

In telling this story, the Secretary emphasized the shame of a situation in which our country’s soldiers return from service to find themselves on the streets. We know what needs to be done to end homelessness, he said, and there is simply no excuse for homelessness among veterans in our society.

Indeed, the Federal Government reports substantial progress in addressing veteran homelessness, and here in DC the local government reports a 12% decrease in the number of homeless vets in the past year. Bread for the City is proud to play a role in that effort, as our own work with veterans has expanded and deepened in recent years. We are heartened by this progress.

Nonetheless, though Secretary Donovan’s conviction was apparent, his remarks exemplify a disturbing trend in the politics of poverty in our country. By expressing outrage specifically at the prospect of veteran homelessness, and by focusing his calls for relief almost exclusively on veterans, the Secretary seemed to shrink from the notion that we can and should end homelessness entirely.

A number of Bread for the City clients were represented by the memorial candles lit on Wednesday night. None of them were registered veterans. Did Secretary Donovan’s appeal apply to them? They were not students, and they were not on a track to turn their lives around. They were elderly, disabled, struggling with addiction — left out of the modern economy. Did they not deserve stable housing, as well?

Bread for the City’s Housing Access Program serves many who are homeless. Some people we’ve even managed to help place into housing. Some of them will be able to refocus themselves, and even find employment again. But most will not get there. They will not conquer all of their demons. Their stories will not make for inspiring anecdotes. As Stacey Johnson, Director of our Housing Access Program, says, “Homelessness isn’t pretty, and you can’t make it pretty.”

A true commitment to ending homelessness must be unconditional. It must entail a recognition of the intrinsic value of every human being, regardless of circumstance. We hope that some day our vision — of a community in which all people, regardless of circumstance, have access to the resources they need to live with dignity and respect — will be a vision shared and expressed by the leadership of our country.

George says: This week, thanks to our supportive Board and amazing staff, I will begin my first Sabbatical in more than 16 years of service. I'll be back by the spring -- rested, rejuvenated and ready to realize our strategic goals. Have a happy New Year!

What a year. When we talk about 2011, we can say first and foremost that more people are able to turn to Bread for the City with more problems, and get help from more problem-solvers, than ever before.

Indeed, this year saw the culmination of efforts that span across all of my sixteen years as Executive Director. And I can tell you that the result is everything we’d hoped for, and more.

As the year began, we completed a long-planned expansion of our Northwest Center. The new building immediately met with glowing praise (and proceeded to win quite a few awards), but its beauty was just the beginning.

This expansion more than doubled the size of our medical clinic, nearly tripling our capacity to provide free primary care. It’s enabled us to innovate (with initiatives like an in-clinic computer lab and a new e-health project called the “Patient Portal”), branch into new areas (like vision care and — coming early in 2012! — a fully operational dental clinic!), and engage with our clients in new peer-based health-education settings.

The expansion brings benefits to our other programs as well. For instance, the new space helped our food pantry take a big step forward this year when, for the first time ever, our Northwest and Southeast food pantries opened up to residents of Northeast DC. Meanwhile, our legal clinic and social services departments now have their own office space to accommodate growing staff — which is tremendously helpful as we’ve launched new specialized projects like the Child Support Project and the Housing Access Program.

All that is a lot. So would you believe me when I say that the result adds up to even more than the sum of these parts?

See, on top of our traditional holistic service model of providing services to those in need, Bread for the City is developing an array of activities and spaces through which our clients can engage in new ways with us, with each other, and with you.

Come to either of Bread for the City’s facilities on any given day (and I do welcome you to visit!) and you’ll find our clients working on their resumes in our Pre-Employment Program, sharing their cooking skills, practicing yoga, crafting our advocacy agenda, learning how to use computers and the internet, using digital media to share their stories, and even gardening on our rooftops. We’ve expanded our wildly successful Glean for the City program to engage more with the food system right here in DC, and we’ve developed our own version of a (fully free) farmers market.

In a real sense, Bread for the City has grown from a ‘service center’ where individuals get help into a ‘community center’ where new ways of living together are forged right before our very eyes.

Your support has helped us to scale great heights. I am so excited to see ahead of us all the places we can go next. (Indeed, stay tuned early next year for a string of announcements about more great steps forward — including plans for expansion of Bread for the City’s Southeast Center!) The urgency of these times demand that we move ever forward.

On that note: this is the best time for you to support our work. Not only is it the end-of-year season for giving, but we’ve also been challenged by the Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation to raise more money in this final week of 2011 than ever before — and they will match all new dollars, dollar for dollar. That means if you become a new donor to Bread for the City, your donation will be doubled by the Cohen Foundation. And if you are already a donor, you can give your largest gift yet, and the increased amount will be matched.

Make your tax-deductible donation today, and your impact will be doubled. What a deal! Thank you for standing with us.

On this holiday, we draw strength and joy from our loved ones. And Bread for the City draws strength from you. With your support, we’ve made the holidays happen for thousands of our most vulnerable neighbors. Thank you for being a part of this community.

Every year, we invite Bread for the City clients, volunteers, and staff to join us in a special holiday portrait photography session. Many thanks to Steve Goldenberg for his ongoing support of this project, and for Mark Silva for helping this year.

Below we are sharing a slideshow of our favorite portraits from this year. You can see the Flickr set here, including captions about the people in the pictures.

Also: below, check out this video montage of personal messages from portrait participants, as shared with and produced by the Bread for the City Storybank Team!

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone!

Judy, our Storybanker

We received word this week of a great holiday present for Bread for the City!

The Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation, a family foundation committed to social justice in the DC area, has just pledged that they will match all of the new funding that we raise in the last two weeks of this year, dollar for dollar (up to $20,000).

During this crazy time of the year last year, we broke all of our own fundraising records. We raised $160,000 through our website during the last two weeks alone! This year, I’m thrilled to report we’re already on track to break those records once again. Your support is so inspiring.

If we can keep up this momentum, the Cohen Foundation will double the additional gifts we receive before the end of the year!

So let’s get to it! How the challenge works:

• If you’ve never given to Bread for the City before, make a gift today and it will be matched, dollar for dollar.

• If you gave last year but haven’t given to us this year, make a larger gift today and your increased amount will be matched.

• If you’ve already given this year, help us bring this message to your friends and family. Share this post on Facebook, Twitter, through email, whatever. Print it out and fax it. Encourage them to give. As new donors, any gifts your friends and family make before the end of the year will be matched dollar for dollar.

By the way: it’s not too late to make a gift to Bread for the City in honor of a friend or loved one. We can still send a special email to a designated recipient of your choice, wishing them a happy holiday! Just let us know what you’d like to say (in the “Comments” field of our donation page) and we’ll take care of the rest.

Make your gift today, and help us rise to meet this challenge. Thank you, and happy holidays.

Our Medical Clinic is hiring! See job details below:

Reports to: Clinic Operations Manager
Salary: $28,000-$32,000 (Paid at an hourly rate)
Typical Schedule: 9:00am-5:00pm, Monday through Friday

Job Responsibilities:

• Answer phones
• Check patients in and out at the front desk
• Manage referrals to hospitals for specialty care
• Help patients navigate healthcare system and get their needs met
• Connect patient to other services at Bread for the City when appropriate
• Collaborate and sharing responsibilities with other clinic coordinators
• Support the clinic on special projects
• Coordinate specialty clinics – acupuncture, ophthalmology, gynecology
• Collaborate with Clinic Operations Manager and other senior Clinic Coordinator on developing and
• implementing a training plan for new clinic coordinators
• Collaborate with the Clinic Operations Manager and other senior Clinic Coordinator on front office coordination – such as developing a rotation schedule for front office staff that maximizes efficiency, balance, and capacity to see patients.
• Assist in thinking about clinic flow and systems. At times, take the lead on process improvement projects and policy creation.

Qualifications:

• Spanish language skills strongly preferred.
• Strong people skills and an ability to work with a wide variety of people including patients suffering from a variety of physical and/or mental illnesses, and volunteer doctors, nurses and other health care professionals.
• Good organizational skills are a must; this position involves juggling several responsibilities and managing multiple projects simultaneously.
• Must be a team player.
• Good listening skills
• Patience, perseverance, and flexibility
• Commitment to working for and with low income DC residents
• Sense of humor and ability to be calm in the midst of occasional chaos would be very helpful.

Bread for the City is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, family responsibility, physical or mental disability, medical condition, status as a veteran, or any other category protected by applicable federal, state, or local law, except where a bona fide occupational qualification applies.

Interested candidates should send a resume and cover letter [.pdf preferred] to Julia Eddy with “Clinic Coordinator position” in the subject header.

As we were wrapping up last week, on Friday afternoon, word spread that local public health matters  – such as funding for abortion and needle exchange — were once again been used as key bargaining chips in Congressional wrangling. It now seems that, in a deal struck to avert government shutdown, Congress will once again ban the use of federal funding for needle exchange programs in DC.

We’ve discussed needle exchange here before: how it’s one of our common-sense tools in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic here in the District.Today, our Medical Clinic Director, Dr. Randi Abramson, is quoted in the Huffington Post about its effectiveness. Since this apparently bears repeating, below is an edited excerpt of our previous post on the matter.

To get a sense of what needle exchange looks like and why it’s important, consider our story about “Lisa.”

Lisa struggles with drug addiction, and has suffered from various ailments that are associated with it — including an abscess in her stomach and Hepatitis C. The Hepatitis C, she believes, was received from a dirty needle.

But you can’t get clean needles at a pharmacy without a prescription or some other demonstrated proof of need. Lisa doesn’t have health insurance, so her options are very limited here. And she is understandably wary about being reported to authorities.

But Lisa can turn to Bread for the City. And she comes here even more often since the loss of PreventionWorks, the now-defunct mobile health program that served as DC’s primary needle exchange provider for more than a decade.

Lisa trusts us. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade (in fact, we trained with PreventionWorks!), and she knew from word of mouth on the street that our services are safe, reliable, and respectful. She developed a relationship with our lab technicians. And through that relationship, she became a primary patient at our medical clinic. Since then, her health has improved even more.

Our medical clinic director Dr. Randi explains: “When Bread for the City describes itself as a medical home, we imagine a place for all members of the community to have access to resources to keep themselves healthier and safer. Just as medical care is offered in conjunction with food and legal assistance and so on, it makes sense to offer needle exchange as part of the continuum of screening, diagnosing, education, and treatment that we provide with each visit.”

In the 90s, during the Congressional ban on federal funding, Bread for the City was the only community health clinic to operate a needle exchange program despite the ban. We did it, as Chief Operating Officer Jeannine Sanford recalls, because it is effective at reducing the spread of HIV infection.

“We don’t just hide our heads in the sand,” says Jeannine. “We do what works.”

One in five cases of HIV/AIDS infection occurs as a result of intravenous drug use. Research indicates that cities with needle exchange programs have seen an 11% decrease in infections-by-syringe when compared to cities without such programs.

There are many factors contributing to DC’s status as the city with the worst HIV/AIDS rate in the United States, but this kind of congressional meddling is certainly one of them. And we are afraid that despite some tentative progress forward in addressing this epidemic in recent years, DC is now falling backwards.

Bread for the City is one of the District’s only three remaining providers of needle exchange services, along with Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (or HIPS) and Family and Medical Counseling Services. And in the time since PreventionWorks closed at the end of February, our monthly amount of exchanged needles has more than doubled. With news like that, we should be hoping for expanded options for needle exchange funding — and instead, Congress is limiting those options.

Bread for the City’s needle exchange program is funded in part by the DC Government’s Department of Health (HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB Administration – or HAHSTA). We expect it will continue to be funded by local money into the future.

Regardless, we remain committed to providing this service. You can support our commitment by making a donation to our needle exchange program at this page.

Dr Reilly (on left) a longtime volunteer and donor: "Every year at Christmas time, my sister's family and I send donations to Bread for the City along with a list of those who we want to honor through our gifts. Bread for the City then mails our designated recipients a holiday card, letting them know that we were thinking of them and that good work will be done in their name.We find that our friends and family prefer receiving the gift of Bread for the City over any present we could possibly provide to them. And I enjoy the one stop shopping!"

Christmas is just a week away — have you checked off all boxes on your holiday gift list?

We have a suggestion for you: take advantage of our special holiday gift program, and give the gift of Bread for the City!

For all donations made to us by December 17th, you can choose to dedicate your contribution in honor of a friend or loved one, and we will mail special holiday cards to them!

It’s easy: just go to this donation page, and enter your desired recipient’s name and address in the Comments field. We’ll do the rest!

It’s a sure way to make someone feel special while making a difference in the community. And it means your holiday gift will be tax-deductible!

Make your holiday gifts through Bread for the City today.

In yesterday’s post, we talked about the new DC Community Anchor Network (DC-CAN), a new initiative funded by federal stimulus dollars that were allocated to bridge the digital divide. Bread for the City has recently connected to DC-CAN, and as a result, we now have access to some of the fastest internet available in the world. It’s very exciting.

But when Mayor Gray introduced this DC-CAN network at a press conference last week (announcing it as a pioneering 21st century municipal internet infrastructure) the reaction was mixed. DCist sounded a note of “skepticism” in its report, and Tom Bridge at We Love DC said that it’s “far from clear” what this new network will actually mean for residents of the District.

It’s complicated. Part of the challenge is that DC-CAN is only a “middle mile” provider of internet — in other words, it carries massive amounts of data through cables that can’t be accessed by individual residents, but rather can be accessed by third party “internet service providers” (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon or local providers like DC ACCESS, who then bring this bandwidth the “last mile” into people’s homes. It’s hard to know what DC-CAN will actually change about the realities of the digital divide in our communities.

Here at Bread for the City, however, we do see a vision of a future in which DC-CAN is a tremendously valuable resource for the residents of DC. It’s through the city’s “community anchor institutions,” to use the term employed by the city’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO).

In the application for the stimulus funding that made DC-CAN possible, OCTO pledged to connect this network directly to more than 200 designated community anchor institutions such as health clinics, educational facilities, and community centers. As per the terms of the federal grant, these organizations can be connected to DC-CAN for free, and then purchase it at the same cost that any other internet service provider would pay. (See their pricing here.)

Our Discovering Technology Fair last month was made possible by DC-CAN.

Bread for the City was the first such community anchor institution to connect to this network. And we’ve been eagerly experimenting with ways to open up this 21st century technology to our community.

It was DC-CAN’s bandwidth, for instance, that enabled us to host a “Discovering Technology Fair” in which almost 200 people came together to use our publicly accessible wireless network for hands-on experience with the internet. The outcome clearly demonstrated the need and opportunity for broadband adoption in our community.

With the strength of DC-CAN, we’re also planning to expand the level of on-site internet access that we can offer to our clients.

And our next step is to go “the last mile” ourselves, bringing this new bandwidth directly into people’s homes by launching an open community wireless network. Using special technology that allows wireless devices to talk to each other and make “mesh” networks, we will share our surplus DC-CAN bandwidth with the neighborhood around our centers.  (Learn more about this technology at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative, who have advised us on this project.)

Installing the wireless "mesh" router on our Northwest Center's rooftop.

In partnership with the Broadband Bridge, we can work to build that network out block by block. We’ve already installed the routers that can bring this DC-CAN bandwidth into the homes of our nearby clients! When OCTO completes the installation of our network, we will be ready to go the “last mile” — and after that, the more community anchor institutions who connect to DC-CAN and participate, the broader this level of access will become.

We are eager to travel down this path with other community anchor institutions on the DC-CAN network, exploring ways to work together to provide essential internet service directly to the people who need it most.

Do you work with a non-profit organization that might qualify as one of DC-CAN’s “community anchor institutions”? We are happy to share what we’ve learned about this network, and help others take this great step forward. First thing to do would be to fill out this survey about your organization’s internet usage and needs.

If you’d like to learn more about our partners in the Broadband Bridge, email info@broadbandbridge.org. Let’s be in touch so that we can learn from each other!

Today’s post has been lovingly written by Yael Krigman, longtime Bread supporter and Owner of Baked by Yael. Read her story here.

I knew Bread for the City was a special place from the very first moment.  I had been searching for someplace to volunteer on the weekends, and found the DC Bar Pro Bono Program’s Advice & Referral Clinic at Bread for the City — where I was instantly drawn to this model of one-stop-shopping for underprivileged DC residents.

At the time, I was a legal assistant at the law firm of White & Case — so I also brainstormed ways that the law firm could work with Bread for the City. We ultimately decided on a clothing drive, which soon developed into a full-blown community service and fundraising program that still features Bread for the City as one of its primary partners.

Last month, I decided to take a major change in course — and focus full-time on being a small business owner. I believe that a strong social responsibility philosophy is important for any business, no matter how small. Even in this new role, I’m finding new ways to give back to Bread for the City.

Baked by Yael specializes in hand-rolled bagels, cake pops, and other delicious treats. We don’t have a storefront. We partner with local businesses that serve as pick-up locations and we ship throughout the United States.  When I started Baked by Yael, one of my first thoughts was how this business could give back to the community. For instance, we could donate baked goods to events that fundraise for Bread for the City, and donate fresh bread to its pantry. But I knew I could do more. I also knew that people who care about Bread for the City are also people who would make great Baked by Yael customers!

So I started a referral program for the holiday season.

Now through the end of this year, for every sale that Bread refers to Baked by Yael, I’ll donate 10% of that total sale back to Bread for the City. All you have to do is click here to place your order or mention Bread for the City if you place your order by phone (at 202.480.9235).

Baked by Yael is offering great deals on holiday gifts right now. So you can save money on your holiday gifts and party desserts, support a local woman-owned business, and give back to Bread for the City all at the same time!

If the program is successful, I hope to continue it in 2012.

So many people in DC rely on Bread for the City’s services and the organization does so much for the community.  I’m glad that Baked by Yael is able to play even a small role in helping Bread carry out its mission and I’m honored to have the support of Bread for the City as I grow my business.

At Bread for the City, we provide people in need with life-critical stuff — like food, clothing, medicine, stern letters from our lawyers to landlords — but a lot of what we do is helping people by exchange of information. Things like healthy low-cost recipes,the forms you need to apply for the DC Healthcare Alliance, where to sign up for housing wait lists — information that can positively change the quality of our clients’ lives. Much of this information is (or could be) accessible without a trip to our facility, through the internet.

But just as in health and housing and other qualities of life, there are vast disparities of access to the internet in our city. The New York Times recently published an op-ed about “the new Digital Divide,” which cited statistics suggesting that only 40% of low-income households have access to the internet at home, and that these disparities are especially pronounced among African-American and Latino populations. Indeed, in the communities served by our Southeast Center, high-speed internet adoption rates have been estimated at levels as low as 15%.

That is why we are very excited about a new initiative called the DC Community Access Network (DC-CAN).

The DC-CAN network was built by the DC Government, and funded by the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program in President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — stimulus money that was made available for the specific purpose of bridging the digital divide.

At a press conference last week, Mayor Gray introduced DC-CAN as the fastest fiber-optic network in the country — and the accompanying press described it as a one-of-a-kind 21st Century municipal internet infrastructure.

But DC-CAN can’t bridge the digital divide in and of itself. It is a “middle mile” network — in other words, a large source of internet bandwidth that can’t be accessed by individual DC residents. Instead, it must be delivered over the “last mile” into people’s homes by third party organizations.

In coverage of the DC-CAN press conference on We Love DC, Tom Bridge notes that “it’s not very clear yet” what kind of effect this will have on communities where internet is truly scarce.

Well, we have already seen the effect of DC-CAN here in our own facility. Bread for the City was the first “community anchor institution” to “plug in” to DC-CAN. We won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that DC-CAN is a big win for us. As an organization with 75 staff, two facilities, and a medical clinic transmitting lots of secure data, our internet costs before DC-CAN were painfully high — and still our service was insufficient. With DC-CAN, we are saving a considerable amount of money even while getting much faster and more reliable internet than before. DC-CAN makes our IT guy, Andre, very happy.

But though our work here at Bread for the City is now that much easier, this is not quite what a bridge across the digital divide looks like. It’s our clients who need access to this 21st century infrastructure, and it’s going to take extra steps to get it to them.

In this regard, DC-CAN does represent a tremendous opportunity — but it will require a lot of work on behalf of the government, our fellow non-profit organizations, and the community at large to make it happen.

Here at Bread for the City, we’re already taking some steps in that direction. Tune in tomorrow to learn more about them.

Do you work with a non-profit organization that might qualify as a “community anchor institution” and benefit from DC-CAN? We are happy to share what we’ve learned about this network, and help others take this great step forward. First thing to do would be to fill out this survey about your organization’s internet usage and needs. Let’s be in touch so that we can learn from each other.