We Are All Transformed

The following article is featured in the fall edition of News From HOME, our quarterly print newsletter.  You can read the whole newsletter online here.  If you want to subscribe, click here.

Listening to a resident’s story of life on the streets and overcoming addiction.  Playing with a child from North Philly at the Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs summer camp.  Assisting with the shower program at the Stephen Klein Wellness Center.  Hosting a bingo game for residents at 1515 Fairmount and Kate’s Place.

These were just some of the experiences of a special group of area high school students who dedicated two weeks of their summer to Project HOME by participating in our Service Learning Program.  Launched a little over a year ago, Project HOME’s Service Learning Program encourages school communities to embrace our mission by partnering with us to create opportunities for education on homelessness and poverty through an ongoing commitment to relationships with our residents and participants. 

Our Service Learning Program started as the vision of Joan McConnon, cofounder and Associate Executive Director/CFO of Project HOME.  Recalling the transformative impact of her own experiences volunteering as a high school and college student, Joan was convinced that such a program stems directly from a key part of our mission, our commitment “to create a spirit of community among persons from all walks of life, all of whom, we believe, have a role to play in making this a more just and compassionate society.” Joan explains, “The program strives to build lasting relationships between members of the Project HOME community and members of our partner school communities. Through learning and service we are all transformed.” 

Colleen McDermott, a student at Bishop McDevitt High School, came to new understandings in volunteering with our street outreach teams while serving meals at St. Columba.  “I will forever look at people who experience homelessness differently. They are not all the same.  They have complicated stories and something that brought them here.” 

“I have become more aware of my duty as a human being,” reflected Erin McLaverty from Little Flower High School, “to support, love and care for everyone regardless of whether they have a home or not.  I noticed that I was much more compassionate than I had thought.” 

“Service experiences invite students to enter worlds that they might not normally enter,” says Margie Winters, who coordinates the Service Learning Program. “Through education and encounters with persons experiencing homelessness and poverty, students break through the barriers of stereotype and stigma and recognize the commonalities in our stories.”

In addition to the summer program, during last academic year fifteen different area schools engaged with Project HOME in the Service Learning Program, by providing education programs at their schools or by coming to our sites for education, reflection, and volunteering.  Margie Winters estimates that about 1,800 students were impacted by the program. 

And she believes those numbers translate into real power in the world: “We truly believe that the vast majority of students who come to Project HOME find in themselves compassionate hearts and willing spirits to reach out and serve others and be young men and women who make a difference in our world.”

Project HOME’s Service Learning Program is creating opportunities and planting seeds of hope – seeds that we believe will grow and sprout into a new generation of citizens and leaders who are committed to ending homelessness and poverty in our community and beyond. 

If your school wants to create a service learning partnerships with Project HOME, contact Margie Winters at [email protected].

This summer’s service learning program was funded in part by the Maguire Foundation, whose Maguire Scholars programs provides financial assistance to talented students from low-income communities so they can succeed in college.