Like its namesake whose legendary devotion to the poor is celebrated across cultures and creeds, the Franciscan Center in Baltimore strives to serve area sick and indigent in all aspects of their circumstance ? including their need to become self-sufficient.
“One of the things that we?re real interested in is adding another layer to our operation,” said Franciscan Center Executive Director Karen Heyward-West. “We have clients who, with the right help, can become self-sufficient. So now we?re ready not just to feed people, but to teach people ?how to fish? so they can eat for a lifetime.”
To do this, Heyward-West anticipates soon adding a technology resource center to the nonprofit?s range of free social services, which already includes serving 500 to 700 hot meals a day to area hungry; referral assistance, free groceries to 400 clients a month; direct financial assistance to those facing eviction, prohibitive prescription costs or transportation needs; and clothing assistance and HIV/AIDS outreach.
“They?ve been really good,” said Teena Lorincz of West Baltimore, who obtained groceries and money for utility bills from the Franciscan Center. “They?re very nice and they treat people with courtesy. They help you with just about everything. They really, really helped me.”
“They put me back on my feet with clothing, with referrals, with food, with transportation, with anything that they could do to help me,” added Marc Caver, a former abuse victim who now is executive director of the Men?s Homeless Shelter of Maryland?s Prisoner Aid Association, a service partner of the Franciscan Center.
And although the center ? a 39-year-old, 23-employee charity of the Milwaukee-based Catholic Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi ? currently has no boarding facilities, Heyward-West would like to add a shelter to serve a city homeless population estimated to range between 3,000 and 4,000 on any given night.
It already has a community arts program ? which meets three times a week to help clients express their “inner conflict and turmoil” and cope with the challenges of modern living ? and an open, interdenominational religious service on Fridays.
“It feels good, and I just think that?s why I?ve been placed here,” Heyward-West, who took over in April as the first non-religious in the director?s post, said of her interest in the field. “This is my calling.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2004 national poverty rate was 12.6 percent, but in Baltimore City it was 21.5 percent.
More information
» Franciscan Center
101 W. 23rd St., Baltimore
410-467-5340
www.franciscancenterbaltimore.org
