This morning I spent time at our agency's Samaritan Center, a transitional housing program for homeless families in the northern end of our Diocese. I was there, with members of my admin team, to speak with funders regarding their support for our program. We generally host onsite meetings with funders during the day, while our residents are out of the facility at school, at work or taking care of the necessary activities of their busy lives. This helps minimize us intruding on their space at our facility while they are home, while allowing funders a glimpse of the space and our program.
For the better part of an hour, in a conference room on the administrative side of the campus, I spoke of the necessary and important work of the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach's Samaritan Center. We discussed the amazing program and supports. We discussed the challenges and barriers our residents faced. We spoke of current trends and conditions that impact the program, the agency and the community as a whole. The conversation was robust, engaged and helped to forge a better understanding of the work we do. The funders asked good questions, raised thoughtful points of consideration, and were fully focused on the discussion.
On this particular morning we had a young family moving into the center. We prepped the donors that there would be a little activity taking place in the residential space as the family settled, and indicated that we would try to move our tour and conversation out of the way of our new residents so that we didn't disrupt the process of getting them settled.
As we entered the residential facility we ran directly into a young girl, maybe three year's old or so, who was taking in all that was happening. Our group of eight strangers was filing in, while staff and her mom and another adult carried in their belongings. Some of their possessions were stacked by the door, and others had already been taken to their room. It could have easily been a very scary and confusing moment for this little girl. She danced about the common area and took in her surroundings. She looked to her mom with excitement and asked "Do we get to stay here?"
With little planning and with likely little understanding of where she was, that young child said in six words what I had just spent an hour trying to depict. Nothing I said could have been nearly as important or impactful as that child's question and her mom's confident answer "Yes!"
Thank you, little one, for being a beautiful example of why we do what we do!
