by Paula Heath, Advocate

 “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened…”  Dr. Seuss

If you look at Wikipedia for the definition of “aging out,” this is what you’ll find:

“Aging out is American popular culture vernacular used to describe anytime a youth leaves a formal system of care designed to provide services below a certain age level.”

At Teen Feed, a youth ages out at the end of their 25th year; the minute they are 26, they no longer qualify for the program. Through coordination with other community programs, the staff tries to ensure that each youth has a plan and knows the resources available to them for on-going shelter, food, and medical care.

But is this aging out of Teen Feed really a Dr. Seuss occasion?

Happy birthday, goodbye, good luck, sure have enjoyed our dinner conversations. These are words that an advocate typically does not have the opportunity to say to the departing youth. He might be there on a volunteer’s Friday, but he is gone forever before the next Friday. I have found myself on several occasions asking the staff what happened to so-and-so, is everything okay. It may be that because I like human stories so much, this abrupt ending, which is not really an ending, of course, leaves me with a bit of a cliffhanger effect.

So I have wondered out loud to the staff how the youth feel about their disappearing act, their “aging out.”  Do they feel they have accomplished something, become savvier and more confident, or do they see the system just tossing them up to another program? How important was the Teen Feed meal to them, and how much will they miss it …?

I’ve only touched the surface here, I think; there’s much more to listen to and learn. Safe to say the headline appears to be that no youth wants to age out of Teen Feed. Their perspectives range from anger to resignation/practicality and may be correlated to their housing and income situations at the time.

The youth know that Teen Feed is more than a warm, complete meal every night (many often have no real meal during the rest of the day); it’s their living room, a place where they can talk with friends and form relationships. Gaining better skills for healthy relationships and lifestyles, experiencing safety and consistency – these are part and parcel of the program.

The youth with whom I spoke all know exactly when they will age out – in fact one offered the age-out years of a number of different programs. Many can have difficulty expressing their feelings and may become argumentative, disrespectful, and even angry as they near their end date. Perhaps, as one staff member pointed out, this behavior is an effort to distance themselves from the program before they know they’ll have to leave.

On the other hand, there is this: For one youth with stable housing and food stamps, it was a shrug and then, “I don’t want to leave Teen Feed, but since I will have to, I guess I’ll have to learn to cook dinner.”

All with whom I spoke said that, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being super important, Teen Feed is a 10 in their lives today. This gave me pause: Congratulations to the Teen Feed staff and volunteers of all kinds – you are making a real difference. Still, right now, the termination is abrupt, and the new life stage is not at all known — or inviting.

Be well through the holidays, everyone.

 “The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.” – John Galsworthy

“Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”

~William Faulkner

By Paula Heath, Advocate

Right now, you may be thinking that “grateful volunteers” should say instead… “grateful nonprofit organizations.” The truth is that I have been thinking how grateful I am for Teen Feed. And based on the attendance and enthusiasm at the Annual Celebration October 10 at Hillel, I think I’m not alone!

My own volunteer history has included two hospitals, trail repairs and cleanups, big sisters, and for the past 15 months, Teen Feed. And of all the organizations, Teen Feed has made me feel the most valued. So I have looked back to see what they’ve done, that’s touched me personally, in the way of thanks:

• a snail mail card for no reason except to say thank you

• a personal and a general thank you at every meal I attend

• e-mail reminders, reach outs for extra volunteerism at special events relating to teen feed

• warm hugs from the staff

• contagious and unwavering enthusiasm, kindness and positivity

• events just for us, like the Annual Picnic and Annual Celebration

This year was my first Annual Celebration. Smoothly run, thoughtfully assembled, and appropriately modest in presentation. Simple handwritten charts on the walls and table centerpieces that cost nothing but brainpower and staff creativity. Because we were at Hillel, the food had to be kosher and it was delicious, generous, and varied – Leah’s is the greatest! Each speaker was humble, sincere and gracious, and each honoree likewise was modest and happy.

So I’d like to say thank you to Teen Feed for the Annual Celebration – a demonstration of your commitment to your volunteers – and for all the other tangible and intangible ways you make me feel rewarded and a part of something good in exchange for just 2 hours of my time every week.

By Paula Heath, Advocate

Teen Feed staff asked me to give them my Advocate’s point of view on the Board-approved Vision statement. It is a little bit of a cheat for me to do this, because I have spent a lot of time around corporate vision, mission, and values development throughout my career. While it takes an enormous amount of collective work to create them, it is worth it – these are valuable statements for any organization to incorporate into their culture and the way they do business.

The Teen Feed Mission has also been approved by the Board of Directors. The Mission says what we do:

• Teen Feed works with the community to offer support to meet basic needs, build strong relationships, and ally with homeless youth as they meet their future off the streets.

Before getting to the Vision, which says what it will look like when we execute our Mission, let me quickly share a few guidelines often used when developing a vision statement.

• While it used to be a description of the state and functions of the organization after it had implemented its strategic plan, now it’s more of a motivational tool to inspire and motivate.
• For an organization that benefits the community, the vision should describe the future it wants to create for the well-defined community it wants to impact.
• It should be short, simple, and powerful, and use active not passive words…easily remembered, and deliverable in a quick elevator ride.
• Ideally it gives a mental picture of the vision.
• Focus on the most important facets of the overall vision.

Here is the Teen Feed Vision:

Every youth:
­* strengthens and is strengthened by their community,
* loves and is proud of the person they are,
* is passionate and experiences growth,
* is safe, and
* works toward justice and experiences peace.
Every youth sees their whole life experience as valuable.

I like it in many ways – each chosen ideal (strength, love, pride, passion, growth, safety, justice, peace) is admirable. However, all may not be achievable by every youth. It’s possibly challenging to remember them all.

 So, here are three suggested stand-alone Vision statements – which carry the weight of the above Vision’s intent, but allow for some of the sub-points to be brought in to flesh it out, as needed.

1. Every [street] youth strengthens and is strengthened by their community.
2. Every [street] youth sees their whole life experience as valuable.
3. Teen Feed’s vision is that every street Youth can realize their full strength, value and potential for themselves and their community.

[Director’s Note:  Thank you Paula for providing great input on the heart of what we do!  To the next 25 years!  -megan]

- By Paula Heath, Teen Feed Advocate

Life is slippery. Here, take my hand. – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

As an Advocate with Teen Feed, our role sounds pretty simple: establish a safe zone for conversation from 7-8 pm; elicit information, whenever possible, about the Youth’s present situation that can be used by Staff to help them meet their goals and improve their circumstances. Note that our role is not to become a Youth’s new BFF. That is deliberate – and a good thing. But it’s not for everyone: it takes the right fit, and some understanding of the core principles of social work.

Teen Feed is here to ‘restore and enhance’ the Youth’s ‘capacity for social functioning.’₁  We Advocates, who are not social workers, use our own life’s knowledge of people, attained through personal experience, to learn about the Youth’s condition and life objectives. During a one-hour meal in a bustling atmosphere. When conveyed to case workers at the end of each meal, this type of information can expedite assistance for the Youth toward their goals.

But a challenge can come into view if attachments form. When a Youth and an Advocate become too attached, it can be counterproductive and unhealthy for both, so boundaries and reminders of Social Work professional ethics are important. Admittedly, it can be hard to see the ‘line’ which should not be crossed. For example, for both Advocates and Staff, we can’t help to create success for the Youth without building rapport and gaining their trust…Two qualities Wiki uses to define friendship are trust and mutual understanding. Is it unhealthy to be friends, then?

The safest rule of thumb is to think in terms of ‘professional closeness’ when you walk into Teen Feed. Remember the importance of objectivity and clear thinking to success, and the productivity possible in the absence of potentially damaging irrational emotions. And use Staff members as the best source for any questions in the areas of exchanging emails, friending on Facebook, and meeting out of program (Note that all of these examples could be outside the ethical boundaries).

A friend in need is a friend indeed – Proverb

₁http://www.socialworkers.org/pressroom/features/general/profession.asp

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” –J. R. R. Tolkien

 By Paula Heath, Teen Feed Advocate

Today was July 3. The menu was bacon cheeseburgers with mustard, mayonnaise, and ketchup, corn, and chocolate chip cookies. Last Saturday night, the menu was a full Thanksgiving dinner with real turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and yam casserole with marshmallow topping. Oh, and the most amazing pumpkin bread.

Teen Feed serves meals to between 40 and 70 homeless youth, aged 13 to 25, seven nights a week. There is sufficient food for everyone to have seconds. There are 50 food teams, so how on earth does all that food come together? It’s actually a very orchestrated process, with written instructions, to-do’s, and an assigned food team leader. Briefly, each food team is responsible for their menu, food purchasing, preparation, serving, and cleanup, including taking out the garbage and transporting leftovers to the shelter. On meal night, they will each spend about 3 1/2 hours at the site.

I have been an admiring observer of the food teams on the nights I volunteer as an advocate for about a year now. Here is what I would like you to know about them.

Without exception, each member of the team is focused on getting the job done well and on time because they know how much the youth depend on the 7 PM start. (Many youth will not have had either breakfast or lunch.) Everyone has a role. They’re chopping or shredding or assembling or cleaning up as they go. It’s noisy; the industrial dishwasher is almost always running, so the laughter is loud, and instructions are shouted out. Creating a tasty meal is important to the team because, simply, no one wants to disappoint. Each will serve a portion of the meal, so they will come face-to-face with their “customer.”

They serve from behind a table or counter, smiling, making polite queries about which menu item or how much, and then passing the plate to the next food team member, who repeats the process for their station, as the young men and women move slowly down the line. There is no slopping food onto the plate; precisely the opposite: care is taken not to spill, and to be respectful and pleasant. There is a bubbly murmur of voices, reminding me of the sound after a soccer game when the teams pass each other for a congratulatory high five and all say together: “good game good game good game.”

The team knows that food creates a comfortable, homey environment – even if the guests are “homeless.” And they take this responsibility seriously. Given this responsibility, the time commitment, the physical work, and the importance of genuine interaction with this population, who are these foodie volunteers?

They are your neighbors; members of your church; students from your local high school or college; new US citizens; young working people; retirees; entire families; affinity groups; and folks who work together at local businesses.

Why did they choose this program and this type of volunteerism? They hope to provide some comfort and happiness to those in need, with something they’ve made themselves. And, I think they intuitively know the truth behind the Latvian proverb: “A smiling face is half the meal. “

• “Where thou art, that is home.” – Emily Dickenson
• “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”                        – Maya Angelou

What’s in those backpacks, anyway?

By Paula Heath, Teen Feed Advocate

At Teen Feed, every night, those of us volunteers who greet and sign in the youth for dinner must ask each whether they have, in their packs, any weapons to leave with us while they are ‘in program,’ eating their meal with the group. The most serious item I’ve seen was a Swiss army knife. I have heard from others about a cardboard sword; numchucks; an over-long pole. But these are peaceful young people.

Homeless youth almost always have a backpack with them as they walk by on the sidewalks of the U District, or play at anonymity in a sunny spot in the park. There are daypacks, external frame backpacks for longer-term needs, messenger bags, duffels and even a diaper bag for those with babies. No two bags are alike, of course. Some were once school-kid day packs – colorful, or with bold patterns like hounds tooth checks, and not really roomy enough to carry your whole life.

Others are major backpacks: external-frame; extended-trip packs with 5500 cubic inches of volume; 30+ inches high. You can definitely see the entirety of your possessions fitting inside.

When you have no permanent base that you can call  home, you have to have with you not just the important physical-needs stuff (tooth and body care; condoms; matches; ID; bus passes; cat or dog food if you have a pet) – but also, the stuff that’s important to sustain your soul and spirit.

Clothes, undergarments, and sleeping bags could take up most of the space. But you’d allow plenty of room for favorite DVDs and paperbacks, personal journals, and precious batteries. Some, who enjoy making their own clothing, will have a collection of fabric scraps for future patchwork garments.

So, what’s in a backpack are personal items, symbols of simple human need (the practical) and emotions, hopes and dreams (the spiritually satisfying). In other words, the same things you would keep – and treasure – in your purse, family album, briefcase or home.

“In the end we’re all just people.” – Elisabeth Moore, a Teen Feed Advocate

By Paula Heath,  Teen Feed Advocate

Behind the scenes of our family life, my mother was always volunteering – for the animal shelter, the American Cancer Society, the recycling center, or taking baskets of food to the lower income families on the island. With her as my lighthouse, I look back at my own volunteerism and see that it is surely inadequate. When I have volunteered, however, it has been in children’s hospitals or with teenage unwed mothers, or wards of the court. And I loved it.

There are a lot of volunteer opportunities that match my interests. For example, I have Parkinson’s disease, and there are numerous organizations devoted to it. But I wanted to stay with young people, to see meaning in the lives of others, rather than dwelling on my own future, and so I found Teen Feed and the group of homeless young people who pass through the doors.

One year in my own youth, when I was about 22, I was “homeless.” I had completed the transition – or so I thought – from needing my parents for guidance and financial assistance, to living and working independently. But I was a failure, at least in my own eyes, and lost my bearings. I gave up all friends and family connections to drive around the country with my two dogs. I cut off communications, looking back, probably because I was embarrassed that I couldn’t hold it together and be a grown up.

What was it like? Winter mornings in Denver, for example, when the sparkling, delicate frost patterns on the slanted window of the Mustang fastback could fascinate me for hours, I washed up in the cold water of the ladies room at the Texaco near the neighborhood where I parked overnight.

This period lasted a year or so, after which I pretty much returned to working-girl life, back in LA. So I have come to believe, personally, that there may be more than one kind of ‘’homelessness.”

Here is what I have learned at Teen Feed: Homeless youth live in shelters, cars, parks, group housing. They sofa surf, they sometimes see family members. Some may have jobs, although it is sometimes hard to keep them for very long. They are extroverts and introverts, and they are very creative and hope for outlets for their talents. There are conservative dressers, seeking wall-flower clothes at the shelters, thrift shops, and churches. And there are travelers, with piercings, tattoos, plugs, chains, personalized, handmade, layered outfits. And everything in between.

I volunteer with Teen Feed to get to know these young people, to help them if I can, with encouragement and by example, and to learn more about life through listening to their stories about the challenges they face every day. Finding commonalities in interests and in personal histories is deeply rewarding.

Elisabeth Moore, a Teen Feed Advocate, writes an article for Real Change answering the question:

“What was it like for a student from Bush School to work with homeless youth?”  

In the end we’re all just people.

While being stuck in traffic or at a red light one of my favorite pastimes is to sticker gaze.  This is especially satisfying given the social, environmental, and political consciousness that embodies the Pacific Northwest.  Everyone seems to wear their views on their sleeves, proudly displaying their political puns or environmental slogans;  even organizations’ logos adorn the bumpers and windows of our cars.  It was on one of these cars’ stickers “think globally act locally” that resonated with me and eventually lead me to Teen Feed.

I had already worked with advocates of animal and human rights, environmental causes, disease research awareness, refugee assimilation, and attended more protests, marches, and rallies than I can remember.  I started thinking locally, very locally.  It was then that I found Teen Feed, a component of the University District Service Providers Alliance (UDSPA).  It was a perfect match.  Less than five minutes away from my home was an entire community, an untouched microcosm, I had never engaged.

It was intimidating; some of the homeless youth were older than me in years and experience, so I stood guarded behind a kitchen service wall serving meals and being protected from their sometimes harsh and sometimes gracious stares.  My only interactions with youth were non-conversation starters like, “salad or fruit?” or “Is that enough?”  So when I was asked by one of my supervisors to work as an advocate, sharing meals and conversations with the youth, I was in a mixed state of excitement to be out of the kitchens and nervousness to be actually working with youth directly; I could no longer hide behind the service wall.

My first meal was similar to my first day at a new school; I went down the line getting my food and then scouted out a place to sit.  I didn’t know much more of youth’s identities than a “salad person” or a “more cheese person”; but I swallowed my hesitance, tried to look composed and took a seat.  I repeated the words I had been told when confiding my concerns with another advocate, “they might be homeless, but we’re all just people.”  After a few rounds of that chorus I was peeled out of my own head when the youth sitting across from me said, “Today was a weird day” and the ice cracked.  From there on it only got easier.  The following meals were filled with conversations about everything from SNL skits to politics and religion.  It didn’t have to be deep it just had to be a connection.  So youth continued from celebrity gossip to guilty TV and movie pleasures and by the second week I had met more compelling people in two weeks than I had met in a lifetime.        

And so I stay.  My project is now wrapping up yet I am finding myself ready to go to Teen Feed even on my days off.  I feel obligated to the people I have met. I think about them and their stories when listening to a friend complain about having “nothing to wear” when I know people who actually have nothing to wear.  So my advice to you is “act locally”, the first step to bettering the world is bettering your community.  You don’t need to adopt a child from China, there are orphans here, and in my case, I didn’t need to fly to Palestine to work with displaced people, they are right in my neighborhood.