17 minute read

Chicago Help Initiative: 'It's given me a reason to be'

from January 24 - 30, 2022

from January 24 - 30, 2022, page 5

Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy: Out

by Suzanne Hanney

Sitting at the Chicago Help Initiative’s (CHI) Wednesday night dinner, Big Mama, a familiar face on Michigan Avenue, says she is living her best life.

Big Mama was first housed with a cousin and her husband in the south suburbs nine years ago, but she still comes to CHI’s weekly meal program because she connects to her friends and other programs there. She had a poem printed with the Poetry Foundation and prose, “The Age of Coronavirus,” published by Red Line Service. As part of CHI’s Arts & Culture program, she recently went to see “Fannie” and “A Christmas Carol” at the Goodman Theatre.

“I would never have had this exposure,” she says of the Near North Side dinners. “At this point in my life [her 60s], it’s given me a reason to be.”

CHI brings the best of Chicago to people who are homeless or low-income. During the pandemic, CHI expanded its work to assist organizations that were no longer able to serve hot meals. Instead of its usual 130 guests at whiteclothed tables with an additional 70 meals to go, CHI attracted donations from over 500 points of contact – enough to deliver up to 5,000 bag lunches weekly to 22 locations all over the city – churches, shelters and senior meal programs. It received Chicago Innovation Awards’ COVID-19 Response Award on Dec. 7, 2021.

**Big Mama, a regular fixture on Michigan Avenue, attending Chicago Help Initiative's Wednesday night dinner.**

**Chicago Help Initiative founder Jacqueline Hayes. (Suzanne Hanney photos).**

Michigan Avenue realtor Jacqueline Hayes founded CHI in 2000, almost immediately after the city closed Lower Wacker Drive and homeless people began sleeping in doorways of buildings she was trying to lease. She wanted them gone – and then immediately felt guilty.

As a director of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association (now known as The Magnificent Mile Association), Hayes went to her business peers and asked, “If I start something, will you back me?”

The pastor at Holy Name Cathedral introduced Hayes to Kathy Donahue Coia, who was Catholic Charities vice president of family and parish support at the time. They met monthly for a year with Monsignor Michael Boland, CEO of Catholic Charities, and Ellen Gorney, who was director of programs. Together they produced a two-sided informational card to give to homeless people. Boland also offered CHI the use of the dining hall at Catholic Charities’ 721 N. LaSalle headquarters.

The idea was to have a regular weeknight site to refer people on the street for a hot meal – and it never would have existed without Hayes, said Donahue Coia, who is now retired acting CEO of Catholic Charities.

Catholic Charities and Near North churches share the other weeknights, but CHI’s Wednesday night dinners remained unique, because as Hayes interacted with diners – who are always called “guests’’ – she saw new needs: adult learning, which included computer skills, reading, writing, math, GED preparation, and storytelling. The hour-long sessions usually take place before the meal.

Marc Schulman of Eli’s The Place for Steak was the first to donate a meal when CHI began serving dinners in March 2001. Eli’s Cheesecake is still giving a full meal and cheesecake several times a year.

Marc’s father, founder Eli Schulman, used to say, “Charity will never break you.”

Schulman adds, “The bottom line is, what is the social safety net and what are we doing together to help those people. People saw the benefit of being able to do this because of how the organization is handled: Jackie’s drive and ability. A small not-for-profit over time faces challenges, but Jackie’s passion as a founder has been phenomenal.”

Schulman also allowed Hayes to use his name when she approached other restaurants. “I said, 'Marc’s going to do it,’ and they all fell in line,” she said.

True Food, Gene & Georgetti, Hyatt, Benny’s Steakhouse, Swissotel, Greek Islands, Max’s Deli, Texas de Brazil have been among the others who have donated food or provided it at discount. Over the 52 Wednesdays in a year, she might connect with 45 restaurants and hotels. Meals from Inspiration Kitchen and CHI Fresh Kitchen were donated by the Feinberg Foundation because Janice Feinberg wanted to involve minority and formerly incarcerated people, Hayes said.

“I am probably the world’s biggest beggar,” Hayes said. “I ask everyone for anything, no matter what. If I am at a restaurant and the maître d’ says, ‘How did you like your meal?’ I’ll say, ‘Give me a meal.’ Or if they say, ‘My sister is a social worker,’ I’ll say, ‘Oh, would she like to come to our meal?’

“I try to involve everyone in giving or participating,” she continued. “The worst they can say is ‘No’ and that might just be for that one time. I can come back again. It’s like working on a real estate deal. I find things and match it up. The same thing when I work with a homeless person. And, we feel it’s important to show respect for the guests, because that enables them to move on with their lives.”

As Hayes went about her business, she, along with the exceptional talent of CHI’s Executive Director, Doug Fraser, created still other programs as they saw demands – or met people who could satisfy them. There’s an Employment Resources and Jobs Club, for help with resumes, cover letters and job leads; “Art with a Heart,” in partnership with Chicago Sinai Congregation, staffed by a professional artist and volunteers before the dinner; the Arts & Culture Program that hosts outings to museums and performances; pre-dinner yoga, to release tension and bring flexibility. A choir staffed by partner organization Harmony Hope & Healing performs before each dinner and at several concerts a year. A Bike Fair in partnership with Working Bikes provides refurbished bikes, helmets and locks to guests. One lady teaches knitting during dinner, then conducts home sales and gives the money back to guests. Another lady creates sleeping mats from discarded plastic bags – 800 of them to make one mat to keep outdoor sleepers dry.

Doctors, nurse practitioners and students take blood pressure readings, do testing for HIV, Hepatitis C, and blood sugar, provide wound care and foot care. Their goal is to connect dinner guests to regular medical care. Fraser said that these volunteers got into medicine because of people, but medicine has become more about computers. “This was a chance to practice in a place unconstrained by time and where they were very much needed.”

CHI’s social worker (Fraser and one part-time administrative assistant are CHI’s only other employees) visits weekly to help people get IDs, to sign up for food stamps, housing, and other services. She spends the rest of the week in the office looking for health or housing providers or making appointments at clinics and doing other follow up.

“We don't duplicate services that others already provide well – we just connect to them efficiently,” Hayes said. CHI succeeds by leveraging existing partnerships and resources, including upwards of 40 volunteers at every meal when the meals and all of the programs are fully operational.

Sam, who is a CHI guest and volunteer, says Hayes is what makes the program special. “She built it from scratch. Lots of people want to do good, and she’s one of those people who want to do good and that’s one of the things that makes other people want to do things with her.” Her networking abilities are only part of it, he said.

**Gabriel Rubenstein, a senior at Deerfield High School, spoons salad into a to-go container.**

“It’s food and other types of services and being consistent about those services, being reliable.”

The meal is the hook for other activities that “feed the mind and soul, as well as the body,” said Jean Eisenman, who oversees roughly 15 programs from adult learning to medical and occasionally, dental.

The difference between CHI and other meal programs, Eisenman said, is that it gives its guests dignity.

She was impressed that guests affirm each other in the book group, for example. “They will say, ‘I had not thought of that.’ It so surprised me. I had thought it would be more ‘Me’ maybe, but there’s such a gentleness. It gives them a sense that someone will stop and listen to them. This gives their opinions validation.”

Susan Gold, who has headed the Arts & Culture Committee for four years, said the program works because it treats people like anyone else in the neighborhood.

“It’s showing people they’re not treated as a poor group of people, they’re treated as equals,” Gold said. "They can see just that people are disadvantaged, [that] they are no different from anyone else. The difference is a paycheck.” Late last year, the Arts & Culture group had events four weeks in a row: “Fannie” and “A Christmas Carol” at the Goodman Theatre, “Her Honor Jane Byrne” at Lookingglass Theatre and main floor seats to “Florencia en el Amazonas” at Lyric Opera.

Participating in Chicago arts and culture is important, Gold said, because it introduces disadvantaged people to a side of life they otherwise would not see. “It inspires people to do better in life, to see that there are other things out there for them to achieve when they are older in life, to see that there are things they have not had in their life, but that it is not too late. It makes them happier. Once you introduce arts to people, it changes their attitude in a more positive way. It shows that there is hope.”

Deborah Awwad, a disabled senior who used to work for the City of Chicago, is grateful for the program because it has taken her to so many educational and beautiful places she otherwise would have been unable to afford. It’s an alternative education, and they are worthy of it, she said.

Awwad has participated in the pre-dinner choir with Harmony, Hope & Healing and in the After Supper Visions photography show. As a result, Ellen Schorr, a CHI contact and partner, gave her a one-woman show at the Chicago Sinai synagogue.

“Who does that?” Awwad said. “It was such a blessing, and so beautiful because I barely knew her. It’s helping me grow and helping others grow.”

Sharon Cartledge got her clothes at CHI dinners when she was homeless. Now she lives in a senior building in Uptown, but she still attends the dinners because she socializes with her friends and feels she can go to the social worker or any of the volunteers if she has a problem. “I love them, they are family. They spoiled us with hats and scarves. They give us love. That’s what we need.”

**Tom Morrisey, vice president of the CHI board, dishes out turkey alongside director Claude Battat.**

**Andrea Rubenstein scoops out sweet potatoes. She brought her sons, Gabriel and Ari, an 8th grader in Deerfield.**

“I like to eat dinner here because this is where my friends are,” said Lamont Burnett, a board member of the ONE Northside advocacy group who has returned to the renovated Wilson Men’s Club in Uptown and who advocates for Single Room Occupancy hotels as affordable housing. “If it wasn’t for this place, I wouldn’t have reactivated my activism. They don’t just feed you, they give you tools for other things: help you with jobs, with resumes.” He also attended all four performances with the Arts & Culture group.

Jeannette Bailey received a lawyer’s referral and won her case in court when she had landlord issues. She is on disability, and her sons pay the difference on her apartment in Lincoln Park because they want her living in a safe neighborhood. “I love this place. They feed me, they clothe me when they can. I have told people to come down here and get help. Whatever their situation, they try.”

Big Mama was the youngest of seven girls and a boy and the only one raised in a Catholic orphanage after her mother had a breakdown. She was mistreated at home and in the institution; then, she suffered abusive relationships. She still feels the effects of PTSD. She has had many jobs over the years, but does not receive disability benefits. Instead, she holds a sign asking people to help the poor. She doesn’t call it panhandling.

“Everything I have is by the grace of God,” she said.

Big Mama says she is more goal-oriented now than in her youth. At one dinner, she picked up free copies of Poetry magazine and The New Yorker. She considers herself an up-and-coming writer and her goal is to be Poet Laureate of Illinois. “I have always had it in me, but coming here, these people – especially Susan Gold – have inspired me.”

Hayes estimates 35 to 40 percent of their guests may be housed. Donahue-Coia said they learned that it depended on how they asked the question.

“If you say, ‘Are you homeless?’ everyone says ‘No,’” Donahue Coia said. “In fact, they are homeless the last week of the month because they ran out of money to stay in a hotel. They can stay with a relative until they get aggravating and then they get kicked out. Sometimes they can get into [a shelter] and sometimes not. More like 30 percent have a place to live, but are very poor and come to the meal to have a community and be able to eat. Sometimes they are on SSI and live in subsidized housing. After rent and food stamps are gone, they don’t have any money. If your meal is provided, it goes a long way.”

Both Hayden Green and Mike Dessimoz say they started volunteering with CHI because their lives have been blessed and they wanted to give back. Green said it hurts him to see people on the street and he was looking for meaningful purpose. He also likes running into CHI guests elsewhere and knowing their names.

CHI Founder Jacqueline Hayes chats with Rochelle Baker in the COVID-spaced dining room. "They make you feel loved, like you really matter. There is an abundance of kindness, and Jackie Hayes is an angel," said Baker, who made a friend at CHI who later moved into her senior building.

Dessimoz serves hot meals and pivoted with the pandemic this year. He collects donations three days a week, bags them one day and delivers them to the far South Side. “The only thing I don’t do is make meals myself.”

CHI added a new layer of volunteers during the pandemic. When it no longer could serve congregate meals in the Catholic Charities dining room, it provided the meals to-go, and suspended all programs. But as other churches – St. Clement’s in Lincoln Park, St. Paul’s Lutheran on LaSalle – stopped their meal programs, CHI stepped in with both food trucks and bag meals to meet the demand. Hayes and Fraser began to hear of meal programs that had stopped and similarly, of people who wanted to help – from Glenview, Winnetka, Naperville, and a Muslim congregation.

**Bob and Betsy Popovich hand over lunches they made.**

“It was organic,” Fraser said. “People took it, posted it, moved it to community groups and churches and it just got wings.”

CHI also put out a call to the River North Residents Association, the Magnificent Mile Association, the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents and Assumption Church on Illinois Street.

“When other people had to shrink, they expanded with no staff,” Donahue Coia said. “It’s amazing to me. Jackie is a go-getter. She has an executive director and a part-time secretary. They just hired a social worker. That whole expansion happened without a social worker, it was a 1½-employee operation. All volunteers. A system like that is very nimble. When you work in an organization, you have layers of approval. You can wing faster when it is volunteers.”

On one Saturday morning in November, people from the neighborhood were walking up to 721 N. LaSalle St. with shopping bags or carts and 12 to 24 bagged lunches at a time. Each had Hayes’ recommended sandwich, snack, fruit, bottle of water and a treat.

Linda Ashton lives nearby and packed up her cart with 24 white bags. Ashton managed a trading group at the Options Exchange and loved it, but felt guilty she wasn’t doing anything for society. A friend of hers was looking for a place to rent and Hayes was the real estate agent.

“She is very good at promoting, you know. I thought, ‘I could do that. I am retired.’ Hayes said, ‘We really need meals on Saturday.’ Then Hayes said, ‘We have classes every Wednesday and they serve meals after that. They were looking for someone for creative writing. I thought, ‘That sounds kinda fun.’ And I loved it. It’s a fun group of people, and so dedicated.”

Lisa Neff and Deni Mayer had made 24 sandwiches as a family activity every week since the pandemic started in 2020. They live four blocks away and heard about CHI as a way to help in a weekly email from Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd ward).

"For neighbors in my ward, the Chicago Help Initiative has proven to be an invaluable resource,” Hopkins said in a statement. “Through their community services and health advocacy, underprivileged residents have been able to meet with social workers, nurses, and doctors. They also help residents in need get a fresh start with available tutoring and job programs. This charitable work has impacted the lives of thousands, and provides opportunities for so many people to give back. Jacqueline Hayes, along with her staff and volunteers, have truly made a difference in our city."

Robbie Conor, meanwhile, an 8th grader at Immaculate Conception St. Joseph, was a first-time donor of 20 bags: a sandwich, an orange, chips, water and a granola bar. He got the idea from his older brother and would receive school-required volunteer service hour credit.

Within 90 minutes on this particular Saturday, 400 bagged lunches had come from the neighborhood and from as far as Elgin. Then, the lunches were on their way to 22 locations across Chicago that had been unable to serve meals during the pandemic. They range from St. Clement’s and St. Paul’s Lutheran to Holy Trinity Cathedral in Wicker Park, Our Lady of the Angels at 3814 W. Iowa St., Martin Temple at 6930 S. Cottage Grove, and United Church of Rogers Park.

**Volunteer Mike Dessimoz makes delivery all over the city on a Saturday morning.**

**Dessimoz handled more donations coming from Mark and Lisa Gaston and Kim Kroll in Elgin.**

The pandemic allowed CHI to extend its model to other, similar programs, Hayes said. There are 90 soup kitchens in Chicago. Less than half are supported by the Greater Chicago Food Depository, but they get their food the way

CHI does: from donors and by paying reduced cost. “The future lies with hyperlocal entities supported by programs like CHI,” Fraser said. Holy Trinity Cathedral, for example, with perhaps only 25 guests at its meal program, can’t afford its own social worker, but can borrow CHI’s on a rotating basis. Meal programs across the city can also use books and magazines supplied by a CHI donor, Hayes added.

CHI resumed its congregate dinners at 721 N. LaSalle in November on a more spread-out basis, with 60 inside and 90 to-go. The Arts & Culture program continued along Chicago masking guidelines, but other programs were delayed until this month. Then, the Omicron virus forced cancellation of all but CHI’s emergency social services.

In the meantime, Hayes said CHI continues to serve people as far south as 95th Street and as far north as Evanston – everywhere in walking distance of CTA. She once saw a guest when she went to a movie on homelessness at the Oak Park Library.

That’s why, wherever she goes, she brings the twice-yearly CHI resource guide to shelters, meals, housing, doctors and more. She also carries packs of cookies – and an invitation to the dinners – for any homeless people she may see.

This article is from:

January 24 - 30, 2022

by StreetWise_CHI