At first, Cathy Allen thought her teenage daughter was having a bout of attitude. As they pulled up to a housing project one winter to deliver baskets of food to people in need, a strange look came over her face.
“I’m not getting out,” she said.
Allen wouldn’t stand for it. “I said, ‘Yes, you are, and I don’t care if it’s snowing and cold, we need your help.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Mom, that boy at the door goes to my school.’ I then realized she knew him and this might embarrass him. That was a life-changing moment for us all.”
The family had been volunteering for St. Francis House for years, ever since their church solicited help packing boxes of food to be delivered during Christmas. Allen saw it as an opportunity to teach her four children about helping others less fortunate. Back then, her children were only thinking about what Santa would bring them; all those people wanted was food, not toys, she said. “Those people” are the type that St. Francis House, an outreach ministry founded by the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas, has served since 1970. It’s “a ministry of last resort,” Allen said.
People who are not eligible for help from other agencies and have nowhere else to turn go to St. Francis House. “These people are really the working poor,” Allen said. The Veterans Re-Entry Program provides transitional housing, counseling, training and more for homeless vets struggling to re-enter society. Thanks to grants and donations, the health clinic cares for those without insurance or appropriate levels of it. Patients receive a month’s supply of medication after they’re treated by a staff of retired volunteer health care professionals and laypersons.
But it’s the social services department—which steps in during emergency situations, like loss of employment, to provide immediate material assistance such as clothing, transportation, shelter, utility and rent payments and more—that gets Allen’s devotion. Food is her focus within the department and also the community. She cooks on Fridays for Stewpot, an outreach of the Presbyterian Church that serves hot meals, and is on the board of Potluck, an organization that intercepts food that would be thrown away and distributes it to organizations in need.
“I don’t know if I have a passion or more of a frustration,” Allen said. “I truly can’t grasp hunger. We have such an abundance of food in this country; no one should go hungry. It pains me to see what the grocery stores throw out in the dumpsters. Hungry people don’t care if a banana is brown! For heaven’s sake, they are eating out of garbage cans!”
More people are hungry than one might imagine. In December, St. Francis House served more than 2,000 people and gave out 27 tons of food. One in four children in Arkansas does not get enough to eat to sustain growth and development, while more than 100,000 pounds of food are thrown away daily in Pulaski County, according to Potluck.
The experiences Allen and her family have through their involvement provide them with regular reality checks and plenty of motivation. Once her children were able to drive, the family began loading all of their vehicles and delivering food for St. Francis House to a complex that houses disabled people. Several times, people came out of their homes when they saw the family bringing boxes, only to learn they were for residents who had signed up. This year, one of her daughters asked if they could bring extra boxes for those who weren’t on the list, and then at 6 a.m. she drove from Fayetteville, where she was working over Christmas, to help.
It was a proud moment for Allen, who has an elementary education degree, and her husband. “This started as a teaching process for our children,” she said. “I think they understand the hopelessness these people feel. I just hope they will always continue to have that feeling of giving in their souls.”