Center for People in Need stuffing 2,000 winter-survival bags
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BY COLLEEN KENNEY / Lincoln Journal Star
Mary Pipher used to feel as if she lived in two different Lincolns.
The best-selling author, a longtime advocate for the city’s poor and refugee communities, remembers a day she handed out food to people — some of whom stood in mud in the parking lot to be close to the front of the line – and then drove across town to eat at an expensive seafood restaurant with some visiting writers.
She seemed to cross an imaginary border between the two Lincolns.
The Center for People in Need suggests two ways to help make its winter-survival kits unnecessary.
* Give to its emergency fund. The center hopes to raise $30,000 in the next six weeks. That should be enough to help 100 families with children keep the heat on in their homes. All donations will go straight to families facing homelessness.
* Ask your church, synagogue or civic group to open its doors to families who need shelter.
For more information, contact Beatty Brasch at 476-4357 or bbrasch@centerforpeopleinneed.org.
“But that is changing,” she said Tuesday at a news conference held by the Center for People in Need to sound the alarm for the coming winter, for a looming crisis the center expects with more Lincoln people than ever in need of a warm place to sleep.
In August, Pipher helped hand out school supplies at the center on North 27th Street. One woman standing in line spoke to her like a college professor.
“She looked fragile as spun glass,” Pipher said.
The woman burst into tears, she recalled, confiding that she’d never imagined having to do something like this for her children.
“I realized at that moment that the two worlds of Lincoln were now colliding,” said Pipher, the center’s board president. “No one is immune from the current crisis. All of us are one or two steps away from being among the distressed.”
Later, Pipher told another story about a man who had walked in on crutches that same day. He’d been injured and couldn’t work. He was embarrassed. His face was red.
But the kids seemed so happy. He told Pipher they’d seen a preying mantis right before coming in, and, to keep his kids from being embarrassed, too, he’d told them how incredibly lucky that was.
Some facts about Lincoln, according to the center:
* It gets calls every day from people who can’t pay the rent or who fear their utilities will be shut off and they’ll have no place to go.
* The City Mission has been telling families they must wait six weeks for shelter.
A 2007 survey of nearly 2,000 low-income Lincoln families showed that more than a third of them had had a utility shut off in the past year because they couldn’t pay their bills; 8 percent were shut off at the time of the survey. Brasch believes those numbers are worse this year.
In 30 years as a psychologist, Pipher says, she’s never seen Americans more worried about their futures.
So, the center is packing 2,000 cold-weather survival bags.
They are stuffing red Coleman duffel bags with sleeping bags, tents, meals ready to eat, water, flashlights, jackets, sweatshirts, toothpaste, soap and stuffed toys for kids.
A fuzzy orange leg of a toy chicken poked out of one of the duffel bag being filled at the center’s warehouse.
The bags will go to local agencies.
The center is focusing on kids, said Beatty Brasch, its executive director.
“Certainly, their bodies can’t tolerate that type of temperature. We’ve got to make sure our children are safe.
“We hope we don’t have to use them,” Brasch said. “But they’re ready just in case.”
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
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TinkBelle wrote on October 8, 2008 9:20 am:
AD - educate on priorities wrote on October 8, 2008 11:35 am:
too embarressed for a name wrote on October 8, 2008 1:09 pm:
GMP wrote on October 8, 2008 3:59 pm:
to AD wrote on October 8, 2008 9:50 pm: