Summary:
This month’s guest post is by Alan Graham, the founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes and the new 
Campaign, I Am Here, which became one of the number one stories on CNN. Alan has become a real friend to Austin New Church and Restore Austin. We have learned a lot from Alan, as would any one. Please take the time to not only read this post, but to wrestle with it, and your response to it.
Who Is Really Hungry?
This year Mobile Loaves & Fishes will serve over 500,000 thousand meals and will probably exceed having served over 2,000,000 (yes! Two million!) since our inception in 1998. This is incredible but what is astonishing is how many people it took to deliver those meals to the streets directly where people are. Today we have nearly 13,000 volunteers in six cities throughout the US dedicated to serving these meals with love. Every night these 17 catering trucks loaded with food, clothing and volunteers head out on to their respective streets to serve these meals. With such a large army it begs the question of who is really hungry.
Although Mobile Loaves & Fishes is known as a feeding ministry what we really do is to empower people into a life style of service to our brothers and sisters who live on the streets. This is really important on a number of levels. To have thousands of people working every month donating their time in service to others is really something. I read once where each volunteer hour has an economic value of about $17! WOW! When you empower so many people in service the way we do paradigms and stereotypes change. When paradigms and stereotypes change you suddenly find yourself with an army of advocates. This is one of the powerful resource engines for Mobile Loaves & Fishes.
Now we can advocate for homes. Go to www.mlfnow.org/HOW to take a look at what we are doing to make people “homeful”. To make people “homeful” we really need to understand what home is. In the recently published groundbreaking book Beyond Homelessness the authors identify eight characteristics of home:
- Home is a place of permanence
- Home is a dwelling place
- Home is a storied place
- Home is a safe resting place
- Home is a place of hospitality
- Home is a place of embodied inhabitation
- Home is a place of orientation
- Home is a place of affiliation and belonging
Who is really hungry? We all are! Food is merely the conduit to connect human to human, heart to heart. Some will be nourished physically and others will be nourished spiritually. If you want to become a part of our army go check out www.mlfnow.org or email us at info@mlfnow.org.
-Alan
