Join host Robert Strock in an interview with guest Alan Graham, founder of Community First! Village and Mobile Loaves and Fishes (MLF) of Austin, Texas. Graham organized and runs a permanent community that offers permanent housing to the unsheltered. However, 20 percent of residents are there voluntarily, coming from a wide range of successful backgrounds. The key to the community's success is the acceptance of everyone for where and who they are in their journey. Graham's time feeding and housing the unsheltered has brought home the importance of one-on-one connection with people. Learning to see and care for the unsheltered as brothers and sisters helps everyone feel valued and like they belong.
In the 20s and 30s, caring for the unsheltered fell to the government, using a transactional versus a relational model. Going forward, efforts need to move toward relational, seeing people as people and loving them for it. Part of that relational quality is welcoming those with mental health issues into permanent communities, helping to address their needs while accepting them for who they are. Everyone, unsheltered or not, desires a purposeful life where they're valued. To reach the same success that's been reached at Community First!, there are needed changes in attitudes toward the most vulnerable. If we can learn to embrace and integrate service to the homeless into our societal culture, we can better understand and assist those in need.
Read the transcription and listen to this episode at The Global Bridge Foundation
