Starting in October, the Tenderloin Technology Lab will be introducing a new Intermediate Computer Skills Course as an option to continue learning after our Basic Computer Skills course or if you are seeking to expand your own computer skills.

The ICS course will follow the same structure of the Basic Computer Skills course and will meet four days a week, three weeks a month. The class will meet on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday from 2:00 PM-4:00 PM. We will be offering the course starting on October 3rd and will offer the course every month. We will cover the following topics over the 3 week period:
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Email/Google Platform
• File Management and Keyboard Shortcuts
• Craigslist and 511.org
• Social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and blogging
At the end of the course, students will receive an ICS certificate of completion. If interested, please call (415) 592-2766 or stop by the Front Desk to sign-up (sign-up is required).

*Please note that there is a required pre-ICS survey that must be completed prior to confirmed enrollment. Please contact us for more details or click here for instructions.

The latest poverty numbers were released by the US Census Bureau this week, and they don’t look good. Comparing 2007 (the year the recession began) to 2010, we see that poverty in San Francisco has increased from 10.4% in to 12.5%. Poverty among San Franciscans aged 65 and over has increased from 10.5% in 2007 to 14.6% in 2010.  Unemployment in San Francisco has risen from 4.8% in 2007 to 9.0% in 2010.

For us at St. Anthony’s, these numbers reflect what we’ve been seeing across our programs (dining room, free medical clinic, tenderloin tech lab, social work center, free clothing program) since the beginning of the recession.  Because we have seen an increase in poverty, hunger, and homelessness among the people we serve, we are very concerned about the deliberations of the Congressional “Super Committee”, who are currently meeting to figure out a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years.

Congress needs to hear that It is important that we achieve deficit reduction without sacrificing jobs,  deepening poverty, and increasing homelessness and hunger. Congress needs to hear from us now.

Our friends at the Coalition on Human Needs have an easy online form that you can use to email your congressional representatives and let them know about your priorities.  Click here to use their form. You’ll be asked to enter your zip code first so that your message can be sent to the correct Congressional Representatives.

Thanks to Live Nation, not just for all the concerts and events they bring to our city, but for donating overstocked merchandise to our Free Clothing Program. They’ve given us pallets and pallets of t-shirts promoting various artists to give away to our guests. Our favorite is the Star Trek uniform shirt, pictured, which we have in a number of colors. Red is my favorite, but as fans know, it’s always the crewman in the red shirt…. Thanks, Live Nation!

What a week this has been! Beginning with the sombering 10th anniversary of the tragic September 11, 2001 world changing events, the remainder of the week has given me an increasing sense of hope and community. Each day this week, I’ve looked out upon the faces of so many of our wonderful St. Anthony Foundation volunteers as they’ve attended our annual Town Hall meetings, this year occurring Monday through Friday, Sept. 12th through 16th. These are the faces that greet our beloved guests and clients, day in and day out, year after year; faces that behold others with respect, with good will, with empathy, with humor, with recognition! I’ve mentioned more than once this week at the meetings that shortly after I assumed the position of individual volunteer coordinator in the summer of 2005, I received a call from a gentleman who said he wanted “to give back”. He said that he had eaten in the Dining Room often during the 1980’s. He was struggling at the time with severe mental illness and often didn’t think he’d make it to the next day. He said that it was the kindness, the friendliness of the volunteers who served him his lunch that was often the reason he was able to hold on another day. Since those days, he received the treatment he needed to recover his mental health. He was flourishing and successful and wanted to give back to the community that helped him survive those most difficult days.

It can be so overwhelming as we consider the challenges of today in this world, in many ways even more daunting than 10 years ago. It IS so reassuring to look out upon the marvelous faces of those who care about each person they see, each person they serve—one at a time, no matter what. That’s where the healing accent is! That’s where we find everything and everyone we need to reconcile, to restore, to not only persevere—but to flourish! Happy, Healing, Hopeful 60th Anniversary to St. Anthony Foundation volunteers!!!! Your presence is a sweet remedy to a world in need! May your kindness and dedication continue to be wonderfully contagious!

On Saturday, September 24th, St. Anthony’s wil be celebrating 60 years of service with a rally, barbecue, and block party in the Tenderloin. We’re still looking for wonderful volunteers to help us make the day a success. We need volunteers for the following shifts:

• Set-Up, 5:30am-9am (requires heavy lifting)
• Rally and March, 9am-11am (march guides)
• Food Service, 8am-2pm
• Stage Crew, 9am-2pm
• Greening, 9am-2pm (recycling and composting assistance)
• Relief, 11am-1:30pm (participate in the Rally and March and then volunteer at the Block Party)
• Post-Event Clean up, 2pm-6pm

Volunteer on your own or with a team, a club, a church or school group, etc.

To sign-up or learn more, call (415) 592-2829 or email Angelina Cahalan at abcahalan@stanthonysf.org.

• Volunteer shifts include orientation, training, and breaks to join the festivities
• Lunch will be provided for all volunteers
• All volunteers will receive an event t-shirt

Franciscan Value:

“We work to be good stewards of all the gifts given to us.”

I believe that I can speak for all of us when I say that each of us at one point or another have found ourselves in dire need of help while in various stages of our common self-destructive disease (addiction).

While at the end of our proverbial ropes and sick to the bone in body and spirit, it seemed like there was no hope left in the world.  The shame and self debasement that permeates addiction had become all too familiar to us.  However, somehow we were eventually led to a place where hands and voices reached out in welcome instead of expectation.

Once there we were given everything; a place to rest; a place to eat; a place to bathe; a place to feel safe at last.  We were given an opportunity to heal and recover where we could not only live but learn how to live again.  We learned about new thoughts and behaviors and we learned how to apply them.  We gained insights about ourselves and others.  We were introduced to an entirely new lifestyle based on ‘we’ instead of ‘I’.  Before us was the journey along the road of recovery, and we were getting better one day at a time.

There was very little asked of us in return.  Follow simple instructions, do some work, and don’t put any illicit mind altering substances into our bodies.  Everything was leading us to work a program of recovery and to become responsible members of society.

Along with substance abuse treatment and individual counseling in a long term social model setting, we were provided with access to a variety of services, from all aspects of social work to access to the free clinic (including mental health/therapy, vision and dental care).

I was amazed by what was made available to me and others like me.  I remember we as clients often asked ourselves, “Who is making all of this possible?  Who is providing all these services for us?  Who is giving us this amazing opportunity?  Who are these people?”

Today we are ‘these people’.

-Anonymous staff member of Father Alfred Center

St. Anthony’s Dining Room has 40 unexpected volunteer slots this Friday, September 16. We’ve had a cancellation by a large group. That’s 40 people, needed Friday. You need to arrive at 8:45 in the morning and stay until 12:45.

Sign up by yourself, come with your family (children must be at least 13), come with your church group or social club, come with a group of your co-workers. (But do sign up. We can’t accommodate surprise volunteers.)

Your group doesn’t need to be 40 people. It can join a group of groups to serve meals, pour water, and pick up trays for two and a half hours, after a crucial orientation.

If you’ve never volunteered at St. Anthony’s, this is rare a chance to get a feeling for what it’s like, scope out how it would work for a team from your organization or company, or decide if you’d like to be a regular, without waiting for the next orientation.

Call Dolores at 415-592-2704.
Call Celina 415-592-2728.

It’s an experience like no other. Give us a call if you can.

The Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure is the largest series of 5K runs and fitness walks in the world. The Race not only raises awareness, celebrates breast cancer survivors, and honors those who have lost their battle with the disease, it also raises significant funding for the fight against breast cancer.

This year some of that funding goes to St. Anthony’s Medical Clinic to help low-income women in the Tenderloin get one-stop breast health visits: mammograms, gynecological exams, cervical cytology. Anything that women in particular need to watch to stay healthy and whole.

Women who come to St. Anthony Medical Clinic for healthcare often have to choose between a doctor visit and a day’s work, between a sick child and their own health. St. Anthony’s will make it easier for women by holding quarterly women’s health days where women can take care of many examinations and tests all at once. A woman who misses one women’s health day to meet other needs can try for the next event.

If you join the Komen Foundation in the Race for the Cure in San Francisco, you help St. Anthony’s, and over a dozen of our community partner organizations, in the fight against breast cancer in low-income women.

You can sign up at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure web site at www.komensf.org

Komen SF Race for the Cure
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The Embarcadero, starting and finishing at the Ferry Building

St. Anthony Medical Clinic will thank you. We thank the Susan G. Komen Foundation for supporting low-income women in the Tenderloin.

 On Tuesday, August 30^th St. Anthony’s held the last of three symposiums, “The Call to Serve: Faith Traditions Reaching Out to Those in Need,” conducted in celebration of the Foundation’s 60^th anniversary. The event featured three local leaders from San Francisco’s faith communities: Rita Semel, founding member of the United Religions Initiative, the San Francisco Interfaith Council, and the Interfaith Center at the Presidio; James A. Donahue, Professor of Ethics at the Graduate Theological Union; and Ameena Jandali, founding member of the Islamic Networks Group.

Each of the speakers was invited to address the topic of service to the poor and to illustrate how their own religious tradition understands the individual’s as well as the community’s responsibility to attend to the needs of the poor. Because we see discord and conflict more frequently than unity and cohesion, it is perhaps easy to forget that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all part of the Abrahamic tradition, all religions of the Book. In that common history there are shared values and beliefs about our responsibility to serve the poor.

Karl Robillard, Communications Manager and symposium attendee, said, “What struck me was that the core values communicated by each of the panelists were more similar than different. It should give us pause to consider why religion leads to extreme conflicts in our world. It was moving to see that at a fundamental level, as humans more unites us than divides us.”  

Despite the bombast and divisiveness we so frequently see from religious figures featured on television, the symposium revealed that this shared Call to Serve affords us a built-in opportunity for coming together from our various traditions and building connections based on common priorities and understandings of charity and justice. Whether it is our own hearts which compel us to serve (charity) or our understanding that to do so is to serve God (tzedakah or justice), when we answer the Call to Serve we do our part to repair the world.