BHC CHILDREN ‘T’-ING UP FOR SPRING THANKS TO HOMELESS QUARTERS PROGRAM!
T-shirts—kids love ‘em! BHC client
families and other homeless in the
Bakersfield community got a lot of
GREAT and really fun ones last month
thanks to an anonymous donor and the
Homeless Quarters program.
Where did they come from? Come
on…you’ve bought more than a couple, we
know it! “Bakersfield—A Riverbed Runs
Through It”, “God Created Bakersfield in
six Days…and, on the seventh Day He
Roasted”; “Oildale University”; I Love
It When You Talk Crude and, one for the
books (from 1991): “Rulers Are Made To Be
Broken” with a red, crossed-out picture of
Sadaam Hussein! We haven’t found any
that say “A Way Up” yet, but I bet we do!
If you didn’t know it before: For more
than a decade, Bakersfield Homeless Quarters founder, Dr. Russ Travis, Professor of
Sociology at Cal State Bakersfield, and his
family created and produced those fantastic
T-Shirts you whipped off to your relatives in
Omaha and elsewhere. A couple of years
ago, deep into expanding his initiative helping to end homelessness in Bakersfield and
across the country, Dr. Travis slowed down
on T-Shirts, reduced his inventory and
organized a public sale as a fund-raiser that
only raised around five hundred dollars.
A couple of months ago, Dr. Travis
planned to give it another go and arranged
to have a second annual T-Shirt sale to raise
additional money for the Homeless Quarters program. Guess what: according to Dr.
Travis, “a community member offered to
give us $1,000 (!) and asked that we give the
shirts instead to homeless people. It turned out to be a win-winwin situation: it saved us the trouble of having the sale; the T-Shirts
are going to people who can really use them; AND, we have $1,000
MORE that can be used to get homeless people back into their
homes!”
BHC and other homeless support organizations in Bakersfield
were key beneficiaries of the Homeless Quarters Program last year.
The local non-profit raises funds from direct cash donations into
those little house-shaped plastic banks—more than 150 are now
placed in stores and restaurants through our community with a
total of 250 expected in place by the end of the year. 100% of all
funds raised go directly to reducing homelessness locally. Dr.
Travis is projecting that around $15,000 will be raised by the end
of 2005.
And, there’s more! The Homeless Quarters program has now
moved ahead with a new initiative, to provide lesson plans for
elementary students in the community to assist in raising children’s
consciousness and knowledge levels about homelessness. Two
graduate students enrolled in the Masters program within the
CSUB School of Education have recently volunteered to help create
lesson plans in compliance with State standards and expectations.
Boosting the effort will be #1, “Helping Others out of a Jam” and
#2, “Helping others out of a Pickle” classroom Jelly and Pickle Jars
(for coins)—As we noted a couple months ago, Dr. Travis thinks
they will provide a little friendly competition between “the Jams”
and “the Pickles” to “juice up” the studies and contributions!
One more thing: the Homeless Quarters program needs steady
volunteers to assist in placement of those wonderful coin jars
around town. If you’re interested in helping, you can sign up by
calling Dr. Travis at 664-3159 or E-mailing him at:
rtravis@csub.edu!
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