Recently I celebrated my first year working at St. Anthony Foundation. Reflecting back on the time passed, this has been one of the most gratifying and most troubling years. Every day I am amazed at the work that is done through our programs. Though I am not on the front lines of direct-service, I still walk through and say hi to the familiar faces in the morning, share smiles with our guests in line for the Dining Room, small talk with clients of our Father Alfred Center. There is the other side of it as well: reading the statistics, hearing about budget cuts, healthcare cuts and senior benefit cuts. It is overwhelming looking at the broad scope of issues our guests and clients face, and wondering where the solution is, how long will it take to get there.

I suppose truly making progress means understanding it is a long-term process, and finding repreive in the daily sucesses. Today a dining room full of guests will have a hot meal today, where there may have been none. Tonight, 51 senior women will sleep safely at our Madonna Residence, and will wake up in the comfort of a community. Today marks another day of sobriety for 60 men in our recovery program, working one step at a time to build healthier lives. It is witnessing these daily sucesses, these tangible and personal sucesses that, keeps everyone focused on the task at hand, to believe in the work that we do, because our guests and clients believe in us as well.

This past Saturday was our Volunteer Appreciation Event at St. Anthony Foundation. Last year St. Anthony Foundation saw 9,000 volunteers serve meals in our Dining Room, teach computer classes in our Employment Program & Learning Center, lead support groups at our drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, accept and sort donations at our Clothing & Housewares Program, bring arts and crafts to the Madonna Senior Center and Residence, and countless other volunteering positions that bring life sustaining and improving services to the poorest San Franciscans.

This year’s Caribbean Calypso themed event included a live steal drum band, virgin pina colidas that were so deliciously sweet I almost got sea sick, a full course meal featuring amazingly authentic Caribbean Cuisine, raffle prizes from our arts and entertainment supporters, and, most importantly, the celebration of a combined total of 2,004 years of continuous service here at St. Anthony Foundation!

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“Hello! How are you? Nice to see you!” said Father Alfred Boedekker to me as he enclosed my hand with both of his hands in a warm friendly manner in front of St. Boniface Church. I had just started working for St. Anthony Foundation back in 1990 and it apparently was a common sight to see this old Franciscan stopping total strangers in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco to greet them a warm good morning. Father Alfred began St. Anthony Foundation back in 1950 in an effort to help the hungry people of the Tenderloin community. What began as a simple dining room has flowered into what many call the miracle of Jones Street. St. Anthony now offers a free clinic, a home for senior women, a halfway home, and various social services for the community and the city at large. It has become a beacon of hope in the city of St. Francis. It has been said that vocations are contagious. 800 years ago a man in Assissi answered his call from God. From that simple act of St. Francis 800 years ago, a man in San Francisco followed by joining the Franciscans and then opening a free dining room for everyone. Both men are gone now but their work remains for others to follow, continue and hopefully, finish. “Lord make me an instrument of your love” is an enduring theme for all who follow in the footsteps of the man many have called the second Christ. From St. Francis of Assissi to Fr. Alfred of San Francisco, we have seen the results of answering this call.

St. Anthony Foundation will celebrate the opening of its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified social services building at 150 Golden Gate Avenue this fall. We hope to have a firm date available soon, so please stay tuned!

As a green direct services building, it will be the first of its kind in San Francisco. The decision to build green was driven by St. Anthony’s Franciscan values of living in harmony with all creation.

The new building will house key St. Anthony social services programs, including our Free Medical and Pediatric Clinic, Employment Program/Learning Center (EPLC), and Social Work Center. In addition to a seismically sound and green structure, the new building will greatly enhance our ability to serve our neediest brothers and sisters:

• We will increase annual patient visits in the Clinic by 40% without additional staff

• The EPLC will train and help more people find jobs in a 21st century facility

• The Social Work Center will expand the breadth and depth of its crisis services

Contact us for more information, private building tours, or to learn about funding opportunities. We hope to see you this fall, if not before

In the future, it will also be home to the famous St. Anthony’s Dining Room while the new Dining Room is being reconstructed, so that no one will have to go hungry as we continue to meet the needs of those who need the most.

Michael Bauer recently posted his ever-anticipated list of Top 100 Bay Area Restaurants. The culinary feats accomplished by these skilled chefs, ambiance created through meticulous details, lavish grand openings and marketing prove enough to make all our mouths water, and trigger green-eyed envy of Mr. Bauer’s posh vocation.

Within one mile of seven of these upper echelon restaurants is an eatery whose accolades outshine the untouchable Top 100.  Uninterrupted service for more than 57 years, a chef who has prepared meals for Buckingham Palace, food servers who volunteer their time for the sheer experience of being involved in this establishment.  However, St. Anthony’s Dining Room does not make this list.  The line for our Dining Room wraps around the block nearly every day, guests in our Dining Room can eat all they like, and the price cannot be beat.  

The smiles and service money can buy at a fine dining restaurant has no value in comparison to the sense of community, the genuine compassion and respect that St. Anthony Foundation shows to all it’s guests, free of charge. 

Here are some facts you should know:

Fact: St. Anthony Foundation now serves over 2,600 meals per day.

Okay.  That’s too easy.  Everyone knows that  one – we’ve been a leader in homeless services since 1950.  How about some more startling facts?

Fact: According to Paul Krugman’s latest New York Times column, many basic food commodities have nearly doubled or tripled in price recently.

Fact: According to The Wall Street Journal, food banks are facing serious shortages in the midst of increased demand.

Fact: As the credit crisis continues, more and more middle-class Americans are turning to services such as food banks and soup kitchens.

Sound scary?  Sure is.  Oh, and don’t forget some other trends.  Home prices are falling.  The workforce is shrinking.  And if proposition 98 passes, rent control and other affordable housing measures might be gone forever pretty soon in California. 

So what should we do?  Panic?  Sell our homes and toss our savings into our mattresses?  Move to Costa Rica and sip cocktails while letting everyone else worry about the world’s problems?  Now, now.  Settle down.  Why not just help out?  Why not try volunteering or giving to our Dining Room?  Try fighting hunger.

Because when it comes down to it, most of us are just one pink slip, one foreclosure, one medical bill, or one string of bad luck away from becoming a part of a growing trend: hunger.  Would you want to starve?

When I was first asked to make a contribution to this blog, I was initially concerned that any attempt on my part would inevitably result in a motor of econospeak which might disengage the blog’s audience. However, the appositeness of the aforementioned thought pattern and the timeliness to address an issue of such great concern as the current state of the economy cannot be disputed. It is then wholly pertinent for me to dissert – albeit informally and in very non-technical terms – on how the crisis on Wall Street affects our guests here at St. Anthony’s, how it affects us as providers to those guests and how it affects our donors who enable us to carry out this work. Bear with me as you breeze through this blog, it will make sense in the end.

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My first step out of the MUNI station this morning I was greeted with warm sunlight and clear blue skies. I couldn’t help but mouth “thank you”- spring is here and I am so happy. As I made my way through the TL, I passed a gentleman sitting on the curb. “Good morning” he greeted me; I smiled and returned the greeting.

As I approache St. Anthony’s, the line for senior and family meals had already started. Still with spring in my step, I smiled my good mornings to folks. But a small sadness began to creep into my spring heart – I saw the faces ravaged by hard times and resource shortages, elderly folks clutching their plastic bags of personal treasures, children curling into the arms of their caretakers. I thought about my grandparents, dust bowl expatriates who like many made it through the depression by scraping together food, love, work, and community a day at a time. I have a hard time seeing folks like my grandparents waiting in line for a hot meal, even though I know it’s a good meal at St. Anthony’s.

I’ve been writing about the people we serve who once served others. The middle-aged woman I interviewed who lost her apartment after taking care of a terminally ill brother. The elderly woman who couldn’t find work in her home country after caring for her father all of her life. The veterans from a succession of generations, still broken by the wars they fought in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The seniors who worked full time into their early 70’s.

“I’ve always worked for a living,” Maggie told me,” I’ve always had a nice apartment. I’ve been on my own for a long, long time. Of course I’d never been homeless before. This was a first, and a shock.”

What is remarkable to me is the lack of bitterness in the stories our guests tell. All they can talk about is how grateful they are for the help they receive from St. Anthony’s. They talk about the hope they feel as they begin to address their situations, a hope they credit to St. Anthony’s rather than to their own courage and resilience. People going through the Dining Room line praise the security team for treating them with respect and friendliness, for acting more like hosts than guards.  Maggie wants to be sure I include her thanks to Fr. John and Sister Andrea in what I write “for their wonderful council.”  Bertha praises the staff and guests at the Madonna Residence for creating community.

“When I first came here, I was welcomed with open arms,” Bertha said.  “Everyone here made me feel at home.”

Community and respect seem like small recompense for all Bertha has done for others.  The same is true of so many of our guests.