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ASU initiative connects with people in dire straits

BY PAUL MARYNIAK

Tribune Executive Editor

Every other Saturday morning, a group of volunteers, many from Ahwatukee, join Dr. Neal Lester in a special way of helping and connecting with people experiencing homelessness.

As founding director of Arizona State University’s Project Humanities, Lester, also an Ahwatukee resident, leads Service Saturdays, as the volunteers gather on the Human Services Campus in downtown Phoenix to distribute clothing, shoes and hygiene products to men and women who have found themselves without a home.

The biweekly effort is “Humanity 101 in action,” Lester said, referring to Project Humanities, which is marking its 10th anniversary this year.

The award-winning university initiative, Project Humanities, “strives to be a leader in local, national, international conversations about the breadth, depth, and value of humanities study and humanist practice and understanding across disciplines and communities,” according to its website.

Part of the mission is to help the university and local communities “in talking, listening, and connecting” – which is what Service Saturdays is all about.

Megan Todd and her children, Santi of Mesa and Zora, participate – as does her father LaRay, who drives down form Prescott.

When ASU Project Humanities’ homeless outreach began a few years ago, the volunteers headed down to the Human Services Campus from 6:30-8:30 a.m. to support 150-200 adults experiencing homelessness.

They came from different parts of the Valley and had stored donations in garages, then used a tarp to lay the folded items for a pop-up marketplace along the 12th Avenue and Madison sidewalk.

We initially called it ‘Spontaneous Day of Service,’ said Lester, “but the idea of supporting unsheltered individuals was so transformative for the volunteers...that we and they wanted to continue.”

Now, the group comprises a collection of “intergenerational, multi-professional, and multi-communal individuals, groups, and organizations.”

It’s a lot more than distributing items to people in need.

Lester said the purpose – in the face of a growing need across the country – is to “extend humanity to individuals most denied that fundamental dignity: respect, kindness, compassion and empathy.”

But it also gives the volunteers a chance “for deep self-re�lection and critical re�lection on class, race, gender, age, sexuality, ability, mental health, wellness, suffering, loss, and humanity,” he added.

Which is why the outreach isn’t a matter of dumping a bunch of stuff on tables and letting everyone have at it.

“We want to be personal shoppers and not just, having people wander around getting stuff,” Lester said. “We want to make personal contact with folks.”

And so the donated items are neatly folded and separated into a men’s table, women’s table” and toiletries. “It’s like a marketplace,” Lester said.

People can choose the toiletries they need and the clothing is carefully sorted even before the volunteers get downtown so that winter jackets are not out in July and short-sleeved shirts not out in the dead of winter. The outreach was curtailed to a signi�icant extent last year as a result of the pandemic and only recently ramped up.

It continued during those many months of closure largely as the result of an incoming ASU junior and poet named Austin Davis.

The Mesa youth would visit with those experiencing homelessness downtown as part of his participation in the Arizona Jews for Justice’s outreach program.

Each week Davis would write down what was needed by the people he met and then meet with Project Humanities volunteers at its warehouse where donated items are stored.

With his shopping list in hand, Davis collected the requested items and then deliver them to the needy people he had met.

There are a variety of ways to help Project Humanities’ outreach program.

Its next in-person outreach – which follows COVID-19 protocols – is this Saturday from 8:30-10 a.m. at the Human Services Campus at 204 S. 12th Ave. in downtown Phoenix. So people can be “personal shoppers” for those who need help.

They can also help sort donated items on Fridays – again with safety protocols in place.

They also can donate requested items either by themselves or through organizing efforts in their workplaces, community groups, churches and the like.

And, of course, they can contribute much-needed cash to purchase toiletries and other necessities.

To mark its anniversary, Project Humanities also is designating each month of this year for collecting a particular necessity. This month it’s bottled water, Gatorade and crystal light packs. Next month it’s new underwear, toiletries and re�illable travel-sized bottles. ■ Santi Todd of Mesa looks over the items that are available during Project Humanities’ Service Saturdays outreach to people

experiencing homelessness. (Courtesy of Project Humanities)

Details on how people can help are at projecthumanities.asu.edu/service-Saturdays.

THE MESA TRIBUNE | JULY 18, 2021

Mesa woman makes foster children a mission

BY SYDNEY MACKIE Tribune Staff Writer

With more than 13,000 children in foster care in Arizona, Mesa resident and licensed nurse Desiree File has dedicated the last eight years to providing a stable and loving home to some of the most vulnerable and medically fragile of them. File �irst began by fostering three young children, ranging in age from 15 months to 6 years.

Initially, she believed the kids would only be in her care for a day or two before they would be transferred to relatives in Nebraska, but she became their guardian for nearly four years.

That experience led her to open up her home to more infants needing immediate accommodation.

“I had no intentions of ever fostering, it wasn’t a goal of mine or anything like that,” File explained. “I was very hesitant at �irst because I was a single mom, I had my biological son but after talking with other foster families and getting support from Arizona Children’s Association we went ahead and opened up a bed for a child two or under.”

Soon, File’s 20 years of experience as a nurse and a mother of a special-needs child would become invaluable, as the next infant she took in had developmental delays and breathing issues. “It’s de�initely helped me advocate for the kids in both doctor and surgery appointments as well as training with parents and educating them. I’m doing therapies with them in the home so when they come for a visit, I can teach them the physical therapy and occupational therapy they don’t always get to participate in,” File said.

File has fostered over 40 children, each with speci�ic and case-based needs. These can range from cognitive delays caused by substance abuse while in utero to respiratory troubles, cranial issues, cerebral palsy and spina bi�ida or ADHD.

“With things along these lines, when biological families just don’t have the support they need to of�icially and fully take care of them, they come into my care while mom and dad get further training for their assistance to take them back home,” she said.

File explained that once the children are reunited with their biological families, her relationship with the child often becomes more complicated.

“It just depends on the family. We always try to create a bond and continue to communicate but not everyone is open to that,” she said. “It’s dif�icult for some parents to accept that they needed our help, they don’t like that their kids keep asking for us and we can become competition for them.”

Recognizing what makes each foster child and situation unique is important to File, and she believes this mentality is sometimes missing from the state’s overall foster care system.

“What may work for one case and one family isn’t going to work for the next. It would be nice to see the children be more identi�ied and acknowledged as individuals, not just as a case that meets all the requirements for reuni�ication, because a lot of the time this sets the parents up for failure and then the kids reenter,” File said.

While acknowledging the value of organizations like the AzCA in retaining a foster child’s sense of normalcy through their funding of after-school programs or family activities, Desiree has also noticed many foster parents often face unseen dif�iculties alone.

According to research by the National Conference of State Legislatures, 30-50 percent of foster families quit within their �irst year, citing a lack of support and feelings of helplessness. “After a year, when the child is �inally starting to get the structure and stability that they need or is getting close to reuni�ication, the foster family has gone through so much trauma on their own dealing with the state and the system, they no longer want to continue,” File said.

Since 2011 the number of children entering care began to rise alarmingly in the wake of a national opioid and substance abuse crisis in the U.S., the 2019 NCSL report states.

“I always tell people, it’s the best and the worst thing you could ever do with your life. Just because there are so many parts of it that are so broken, but at the same time, the kids are so worth it,” she said.

“Every child is different, they all teach you something about yourself you never knew.” ■