Off-Ramp donations aid cancer survivors and the homeless

 

[caption id="attachment_10938" align="alignleft" width="300"] Homeless on Bench who can be helped with donations[/caption]

Marsha Hunt----"Every day I see people down on their luck when I'm driving around town," says Cancer for College founder Craig Pollard. "I want to give these folks a little something to let them know that I care, to perhaps make their day a little easier, but usually I don't have anything handy. The idea of having care packages in my car struck me as a way to pay it forward."  

If you're driving around town and see someone in need, having a package of everyday essentials can be helpful to give to people who may lack certain items they need for everyday living. A San Diego charity came up with the idea of doing this while driving around town, calling this Off-Ramp donations.

Packets can contain such items as water, personal care items, snacks, tissues, a toothbrush and other things that are often found wanting by people who are homeless and poor.

Off-Ramp Donations helps individuals but also other charities. Charities can purchase these packets, sell them to their members to raise funds. Cancer for College raises funds that provides college scholarships for cancer patients, and the off-ramp donations help people have enough money for college. Since it started Cancer for College has granted nearly $2 million in scholarships to more than a thousand cancer survivors across the country. 

To purchase these Off-Ramp Donations and to learn more about Cancer for College visit www.cancerforcollege.org.

New food stamp cuts hit poor families hard during holidays

Carol Forsloff---

Interfaith dinner in Washington County

While American families prepared for Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday feasts, the Food Pantry and other groups want everyone to know that people are going hungry every day in the United States as cuts in the food stamp program began just as the holidays approach.

In addition, the Republican lawmakers, as they sought to help the banks modify their investments in a fashion that might risk FDIC deposits, the same lawmakers voted to water down school lunches.  Less food and nourishment will mean more children hungry, even when food is available, but not the kind or amounts needed for growing bodies.

In Illinois with more than 2 million low-income Illinois residents receiving food stamps, many people will be impacted by the benefit cuts that are taking place today. Of that number, just in the State of Illinois, 349,000 are seniors and 886,000 are children.

According to the Agriculture Department, the benefit cuts will break down to $36 a month less for a family of four. The cuts have taken place as the 2009 stimulus temporary increase in food stamps dollars expires this week. This leaves millions of people who depend on food stamps with even less support.

Churches all over the country, and other charitable groups, are trying to make up for the shortfall in food people are experiencing. Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois notes this year will be particularly hard for many families during the holidays.

Quinn says, “I feel that those cutbacks in food stamps was very shortsighted, and they need to be reversed, and we don’t want to see further cutbacks in food stamps,” Quinn said. “In whatever town or whatever neighborhood. we want to make sure we are there to help feed the hungry.”

Kate Maehr, the executive director and CEO of the depository in Chicago, agrees the need is at an all-time high.

“One in six people don’t know where they are going to get their next meal,” Maehr said. “The challenge is, you don’t walk down the street and immediately know who the hungry person is. It might be your neighbor it might be a child in your child’s classroom, but its one in six people here in Cook County.”

An estimated 47 million Americans will feel the effects of the cuts.

In Washington County every year, as in other locations, churches host an Interfaith gathering for the purpose of raising money for homeless families. Like many charitable religious organizations, people are volunteering, even during these cold, stormy days, to work at shelters and continue to bring attention to the plight of the homeless and hungry.

Against the law and cultural propriety to be homeless?

[caption id="attachment_15787" align="alignleft" width="281"] Homeless on Church Street in San Francisco[/caption]

Carol Forsloff — More and more cities are finding creative ways to move the homeless off the streets, off street corners, away from buildings, far from where people move and work, and removed from the byways of America. Is it against the law and propriety norms to be homeless?

As the number of shelters decreases, the rate of homelessness increases, with more and more of the once-working regulars hitting the bricks literally, finding a rude awakening in the rudeness that awaits folks who have nowhere to go and no one who helps. In Los Angeles, for example, as homelessness increases, there is an increasing lack of shelters.

In Portland, Oregon, homeless people have been shot and killed. In February 2012, two men were shot and killed in a drive-by. Folks find those who sit on the pavement those sitting ducks for catcalls and the harassment that is far more than the bullying we speak of in our intellectual discussions or listen to newscasters talk about the problem with their numbers and all.

So for cultural propriety, the problem of homelessness means a caste system of untouchables has developed in America. Don't touch, don't see, don't hear, don't move, get away are the non-verbal and verbal insults that greet the hapless homeless these days.

In Clearwater, Florida, the homeless now face fines for sitting on the benches. Sitting on sidewalks or near public byways can cost $500. Now who would think a homeless person would have $500 ready cash to buy that seat on the bench? The fact is they don't, and those who don't face the penalty of jail time, just as jails are dumping more and more of the wrong types onto the streets. So the revolving door becomes a continuous cycle for the unfortunate folk who can't make do like the rest of us. So the good guys who can't find work and a shelter exchange places with the criminal types.

So the next guy you meet with that cardboard sign might just be your former neighbor or you one of these days. And the story of "I am not my brother's keeper" remains the continuing saga of the treatment of the homeless in the major cities of America.