Professional Survivors

Maybe not everybody needs a friend (though most of us actually do), but no one should have to struggle alone. Yet, our homeless professional survivors often have nobody to turn to. Outside of their environment, they have no one to talk to, no one to lean on, no one to give them advice, no one to just give them a hug. As much as they need a friend the most, not many ever thought to befriend a homeless person. Which of your friends has meant so much to you and has done so much good to your life just for being your friend? Can you aspire to be such a friend to someone who desperately need a good friend?

After finally launching our efforts on the streets to feed our homeless p.s. over the past two weeks, our homeless new friends have taught us so much, and we plan to learn from them even more. Our mission started off with a purpose to help provide the basic necessities to as many homeless p.s. as possible. In our opinion, these basic necessities begin with food, clothing, and shelter. Well, from what we’ve learned so far from our new friends, were we wrong! Yes, our homeless p.s. do need food, clothing and shelter on a daily basis, and we must push forward in our efforts to fulfill those needs. Even though there are so many good organizations and programs that are doing such inspirational work and wonderful job at making these basic necessities available to the homeless, there’s still so much more to be done because there’re always more and more of those in need, and it’s impossible to reach them all as their number continues to outgrow the number of us who are actively trying to help.

However, all of us has our own things to deal with and problems to solve within our own lives, not many of us can dedicate much time to volunteer or much money to contribute. It’s impossible for us to solve this huge social epidemic. It’s impossible to expect us to. But the impossible becomes a possibility if we can reduce it down to just helping a friend. A friend who needs his tore up shoes replaced so he can walk in the rain. A friend who missed a meal at the shelter, and hasn’t eaten a solid meal in two days. A friend who could do so well in a job program provided by a local organization, but has no idea about such program because he doesn’t know how to use the internet. A friend who can benefit greatly from getting in touch with a mental health professional, but need personal support to do so. A friend who’s a single mom and needs someone she can trust to babysit so she can go to a job interview. Can you be that friend to someone?

If we all can start befriending just one homeless, this worldwide problem will be gone because we outnumber them! For every one homeless person, there are over 70 of us who are not. Can you be one of the 70 people to befriend a homeless? As all of us already have a life time of experience in how to be a friend, it doesn’t take much more to be a friend to another person. There’s no expectation, only be as good a friend as you can and want to be, and what you will gain in return is another good friend. Please think about it, and if you can go out and befriend just one homeless and help that one new friend the same way you would help any friend of yours, then you will become a part of a great movement to help rid the world of homelessness. Be a friend and share your stories, pictures and videos of you and your new friend.

A couple of us were very lucky this morning to be able to join the Surrey Urban Mission for Saturday breakfast that they provide for the local homeless people every week.  The people we met all had their own stories and purposes that brought them to the mission this morning. Many were there to simply help and volunteer, while many more were there to eat their first hot meal in a few days. All were inspirational, especially Jonquil, the mission’s executive director, the backbone of the operation.

As we entered through the door with our P.S. pies (Thanksgiving Edition), we immediately knew who was the boss when we met Jonquil, the no-nonsense lady with an unmatched compassion and heart. She lead us to the small kitchen where we met with the master of the kitchen Paul, who was busy preparing brunch with such expertise that made it easy to see who has been contributing to this mission for years. In the hallway, Doug is the go-to guy who was setting up all the tables and prepping the area to make sure there’s enough seats for as many people as possible. Margaret, even with her bad knee, managed many tasks to complete the preparations before the doors open at 9 A.M.

We were also joined by other volunteers such as 8th grader Michael, a Justin Bieber’s better looking brother, who’s been volunteering there for a year and the local high school hockey team. Then the doors opened, and the homeless professional survivors poured in, we started losing count after 50, but our estimate was about 70, since that’s about the number of pies that were passed out. We were told that this was light, compared to the norm of about 100 to even 150 on Saturday mornings, simply because many just received their welfare checks that give them $225 for food for the month. That $225 cannot last through the whole month, and more will certainly show up as more Saturday goes by.

The plates of food were emptied very quickly, and some asked for seconds. The question that came to our mind after the meal was where are they going next in this freezing rain. It is understandable they cannot stay at the mission all day, as the mission is part of a church. However, the doors do open back up again at 7 PM during the winter months to anyone in need of a warm place to sleep, no one is turned away, as Jonquil simply declared “I will not turn anyone away in this cold at 1 or 2 in the morning, we can always try to make more room.” Everyone we asked the question of where they’re going next had the same sort of answer with Bruce, who said, “Who knows, it’s in God’s hands.” Bruce really has a great wisdom about him, and we hope to be able to talk to him and learn from him more. We gave Bruce a warm hug as it was time the church must be cleared out for other services.

Before we left, we were blessed with a chance to chat with Jonquil. The chat turned into an eye-opening, inspiring discussion of her vision for the homeless. Not only do we support Jonquil’s vision, it is now our mission to help make this vision come true. Our confidence in the success of this mission comes from the passion and commitment we hear in Jonquil’s voice. We know we will learn so much more from her as we plan to join our forces to bring her vision to fruition to house as many homeless as possible. We will also share this vision with the world so that we all can move forward in this mission together, so check back for regular updates and videos. With this ambitious, yet realistic vision, many homeless p.s. will finally have a place to call home. No one can do this better than Jonquil and her organization as reflected in Doug’s words, who still hasn’t stopped working as we ran into him in the parking lot sweeping in the light chilly rain, “They have done so much for me, it’s the least I can do.”

It’s been pretty much one full week already of our Tweet to Feed campaign. Time just flew by when we’re having a good time doing good things. The total Twitter followers we’ve received during this first week of the campaign is 64, at the time of this posting, and we have made 88 meal sized p.s. pies during this week, which exceeds the number of followers, and we will continue to make even more as we believe more followers will support us.  Giving out these meals to the homeless professional survivors on the streets have been such an eye-opening experience for the P.S. Team. We have always known that feeding the homeless is just a starting point for us to do our parts in helping them get off the streets, and our goal has always been to do much more than simply feeding as many homeless people as possible. However, we now realize that the need to do more than just feed them is a pressing issue, especially as winter is approaching and these homeless p.s. really need homes. Therefore, we’ve been inspired to redesign our 31-Day of Christmas Campaign, which we hope to rework to also add efforts to find our new friends homes, in addition to feeding them. So please check back for updates on the 31-Day of Christmas Campaign, as we reorganize to make the campaign help our homeless p.s. even more.

This is one of the reasons why taking our initiative to the streets to give it a test run through Tweet to Feed already proves to be so beneficial and inspiring. In just one week, we have already learned so much from our new homeless friends. We are so grateful to them for sharing their stories and streets knowledge with us. Along with their stories, we had planned to bring more photos and videos of our homeless friends to share with our online community, which they eagerly agreed to do and were excited to share their stories. We were looking forward to talking to two of our new friends today on camera, however, they texted us fifteen minutes early before our meeting time that they could not make it. Our reaction is understanding. We do not need explanations, as we are not here to expect our new friends to do anything. We are simply here to feed them and help get their stories out in their own words so the world can come together to offer as much support and resources as possible to get them off the streets. All we want is for them to be OK, and hope that we will see them over the next few days when we continue on with our efforts to pass out more meals.

It seems meant to be that our friends could not make it because we then ran into young Chris, who was holding up a sign at an intersection. We told him we had food for him, and he ran over to meet with us. We gave him enough p.s. pies for both him and his girlfriend as they had to be really hungry, especially after traveling cross country all the way from the east coast to the west, arriving just today.  We didn’t get a chance to talk to Chris much as he needed to rush back to bring food to his girlfriend, but, in our short chat, we did learn that Chris and his girlfriend sleeps in a tent that he carries on his back in -2 degrees nights. They do not like to go to shelters. This is something we are learning that many homeless people prefer the streets over shelters for various reasons. We are determined to learn more as to really why that is. We told Chris we will be back at the same spot tomorrow morning with more food. As Chris ran off toward his girlfriend, he turned back to us with words of support and encouragement that we are doing a great thing. We hope we will get to do the same for him and that we will see him again so we can learn more from him, and make another new friend.

After countless hours of brainstorming and testing ideas and recipes, the p.s. team came to the conclusion that meals in a form of calzone-like pies would be the most fitting for our fellow professional survivors. Hence, the P.S. Pies!

Why P.S. Pies?

1. It’s big and filling, especially with our homemade 8 inch by 4 inch P.S. Pies fully stuffed with hearty ingredients like meat and potatoes.
2. It’s versatile since we plan to change up the stuffing menu from Sweet Soy Pork with Potatoes, to Classic Meatballs, to Holiday Turkey, gravy mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, to even Satay Chicken. With affordable seasonal ingredients and finely tuned process, we will strive to not only keep their stomachs full, but their palates happy as well. We believe it is important that our professional survivors receive delicious home cooked meal because it can help uplift their spirits. After all, don’t we all crave the comfort of a home cooked meal when things are tough?
3. It’s very portable. Sandwiches always fall apart; plus processed meat doesn’t really give that comforting home cooked feel. These P.S. Pies have delicious durable crust that can hold through rain or shine.
4. It’s simple to make and easy to keep costs under control. We are not here to cook gourmet meals because the lower the costs, the more homeless people we can feed. The simpler the recipes, the more homeless people we can feed. The faster we can cook, the more homeless people we can feed. See the pattern? Our main objective is to feed as many homeless people as possible, but of course, with the highest quality of meals possible. We would not give these out if we didn’t find them delicious ourselves; now the problem is trying not to keep sampling them as we make them, but we got the problem under control because we know it will feel even better to give them than to eat them. We may not put the most expensive ingredients into these pies, but every P.S. Pie is made with love, caring, and well intentioned wishes.
5. It’s expandable. No, it’s not one of those foods that you take a bite, drink water, and it expands in your stomach. By expandable, we mean we can easily share it with other individuals, groups and organizations who may be interested in making P.S. Pies for their local professional survivors. We can’t reach them all. But what we can do is share our recipes and even make the P.S. Pies, freeze them, and ship them because these pies freeze really well, and some even think it’s more delicious baked after it’s been frozen.

Our menu of the day is Sweet Soy Pork with Potatoes.

One of the batches we just made to match number of followers in our Tweet to Feed Campaign. These are waiting to be baked fresh in the morning right before we deliver them.

So feel free to contact us, and we plan to put up recipes on our website in the future. There’s no secret when it comes to helping others. We want to feed as many homeless people as possible, and it can only be done if we help each other to help our local communities.

As Tweet to Feed is actually a test run for our 31 Days of Christmas Campaign, we were only expecting to give out meals 1 to 2 days per week for the month of November. However, since we started on Monday, we have been dropping off meals to our new friends everyday for the past 3 days, simply because we keep wanting to talk to them more and more because we are learning so much about them and their homeless situations.

Through our sweet new friend Chrissy, we got to meet Russ, a soft spoken man with such a nice respectable demeanor.  If it wasn’t for Chrissy telling us, we wouldn’t have thought Russ was homeless (a recurring theme). Russ lives in a storage cube that’s parked in an auto shop parking lot. His cube has a heater and a TV. Russ was able to secure himself this accommodation by working as night security for the shop owner, and now he’s trusted to look after the shop while the owner is on vacation.

We met Russ, Chrissy, and some of their friends on the streets on our day 2 of Tweet to Feed. As we sat on the side of the street, Russ and Chrissy seem quite popular among other homeless people, as Chrissy proudly said “I know almost everyone here, we all look out for each other.” However, after our delightful chat on the street, one of our p.s. team members expressed how now he actually knows what it feels like to be invisible as he experienced “normal” people just walking by and ignoring us as if we weren’t even there, occupying the sidewalk.

Still, we left Chrissy and Russ knowing that all we care about is them and their friends, learning from them, and helping them. We decided that we would come back again the very next day. On day 3, we met with Chrissy and Russ at the same spot, but it was drizzly and cold, so we asked if there’s somewhere we could go. It seems the only place that Chrissy and Russ could go was a nearby shelter just a couple of blocks away. Even though we weren’t sure if we were ready to visit the shelter as we did not have enough meals for everyone, we decided to follow them because it didn’t seem like there was any other place they felt comfortable going.

The shelter was clean and warm. There were about 50 homeless people hanging out in the lounging/dining area, escaping the cold. All the seats were taken. Still, Chrissy explained that this was nothing compared to many days when it’s freezing cold, and also dinner time. So a group of us took up a corner, and the conversation flowed. We described more in details our objectives, which is to feed as many of them as possilbe, help as many of them as possible, and learn as much about them as possible. We explained that we are a small group that’s just starting out, and are looking for more support and donations to be able to do more. The instant we said we were also looking for more volunteers, Chrissy chimed, “I can help! I worked as a chef at many restaurants. I even cooked for over 600 people so I know how to create menus, do portion control, whatever you need, I can do!”  She also went on to say that her dream job was to become a private investigator to help find missing children because she has a talent for even finding needle in a hay stack. Russ’s nickname for her is “CSI”.

We talked for over an hour, and decided not to take any pictures as nothing could really capture this revealing conversation that will surely lead to so many many more questions and answers through future ongoing conversations. We did leave with a big question of why it is that people like Chrissy and Russ are homeless when obviously they have employable professional skills and personal qualities that would make them reliable employees. Our answer right now is simply that it’s a vicious cycle of them not having a place of residence, which is a basic requirement when applying for a job, and when they don’t have a job, how could they afford a place of residence. We know there is so much more to this question and answer, and we look forward to getting to the bottom of it on our next conversation this Sunday, which Chrissy and Russ both agreed to talk on camera so that they can represent themselves, rather than have other people or some organizations continue to be the voice for them.

As promised, the p.s. team went out today to bring meals to local homeless people. Our very first professional survivor on the streets that we fed was Chrissy. The sweetest lady, and we couldn’t have met a better person to inspire us at the start of this journey. Talking to Chrissy reaffirms to us that what we are doing can really help.

At first, when we saw Chrissy, we weren’t sure if she was homeless because she was just sitting on the sidewalk with a big bag of dog food, and one of us actually said, “I don’t think she’s homeless, she’s just waiting for her ride.” This lesson taught us that, just like any other professions, you can’t always tell by just their appearances. We took a chance at offending her by simply approaching and saying to Chrissy, “Hello, we have some food to pass out to the homeless. We’re not sure if you’re homeless, but would you like some food?” Not the most polished approach, but as the day progressed, we learned that all we had to do was just asked. And just like Chrissy, everyone we approached jumped up, took our food, and no one was offended.

We were so grateful to Chrissy who really helped direct our day. She knew where the local homeless people gather, what the shelter’s and church’s meal schedules are like, and what spots were safe and unsafe. After all, Chrissy has been surviving homelessness for 2 years. There was so much we wanted to learn from Chrissy, and we could’ve listened to her all day, but we had to move on to make sure more people were fed. So we left Chrissy with an appointment that we will meet again at the same spot tomorrow. We look forward to it because we got a surprise for her! During our short conversation, the one thing Chrissy wished she had was a plastic container. Such a simple wish, and guess what her surprise is!

Here's sweet Chrissy holding the meals we just handed her. We are thankful she let us take a picture.

Next, with Chrissy’s direction, we shortly ran into two men who were happy to take food from us. But no one could’ve been more enthusiastic than the third professional survivor who, as he approached the two men, ran up to us, and as soon as he received the food, started grubbing down as if he hasn’t eaten all day or maybe even in many days. We didn’t ask them questions nor their names as we didn’t want to interrupt their meals. Most people we ran into today were a bit shy to have photos taken of them, but these three professional survivors weren’t shy about their hunger. We left letting them know we’ll be back again tomorrow, and if they are still there, maybe we’ll learn their names and stories.

The enthusiastic p.s. enjoying his meal with one pal, while the other went to the back to have his meal in private.

Throughout the day, we were happy to see that everyone had warm clothes to endure the winter-like chills. These clothes are generously provided by local shelters and churches who took donations from the community. However, most of these facilities only have limited resources and usually have to turn people away on a daily basis, when it comes to food and shelters. We are hoping to simply do our part to help fill in the gap. We know we will learn more and more as we journey through this mission, and we want to share this journey with you and the world. Therefore, we will do frequent updates, hopefully with more pictures and video clips of these professional survivors as we get to know them better and learn their stories. Thank you so much to the twitter community for following us during the Tweet to Feed campaign. Because of your support, more professional survivors like these will have one less thing to worry about, and maybe will have one more thing to let them know that people care, which will inspire them to keep moving forward.

Inspired by Tim Ferriss’s “Tweet to Beat” Campaign, we have decided to start a “Tweet to Feed” Campaign for the rest of November, until we start our 31 Days of Christmas Campaign. During this Remembrance Day/Veterans Day weekend, the professional survivors team have already started our final planning and preparations for the 31 Days of Christmas Campaign, and will start doing test runs by bringing meals to local homeless people starting this coming week from Monday, November 14th, 2011.

Our plan was to do test runs once or twice (possibly three times) a week over the next two and a half weeks, as we’re ramping up toward 31 Days of Christmas in December. However, feeling so inspired by Tweet to Beat Campaign, we’ve decided that, for our Tweet to Feed Campaign, we will donate, make and deliver an extra meal to an additional homeless person for every new Twitter follower we receive during this month of November.

Since we are just starting out, we cannot offer additional incentives yet, though we do hope that helping us feed another homeless person, one nutritious quality meal at a time will be incentive enough for you to simply follow us on Twitter.

Thank you for your support…@prosurvivors

Please donate and let us feed the homeless together.

Before this question can be answered, ask yourself if there’s something you have always wanted to do and still have not done it. What’s stopping you? Can you move beyond trying to pay your bills or fulfilling your responsibilities or overcoming your fear to just go ahead and do what you know you want to do?  Now, take that, and put it on the streets, and imagine that what you want to do the most is get a job and have a place to call home, but what’s stopping you is trying to find something to eat that will keep you until your next meal in a few days, figuring out where to sleep (don’t even mention shower), watching your back from getting beat up or arrested for just being there, and getting over the fact that, just like how most people dont even look at you on the streets, most employer won’t even consider giving you a job. Yes, many homeless people have given up trying, but that’s simply because they have given up hope and all they can think to do is drown themselves in drugs and alcohol. I mean, who can think on an empty stomach day after day? When was the last time a homeless person has a decent meal and a good night sleep? Can you make a life changing move (not decision, but action) on an empty stomach and nights on the streets? Ask yourself these kind of questions, and you should know the answer to why it is that we must feed the homeless before we even dare to ask why don’t you get a job!