What do you think a Philadelphia nun, the famous musician Jon Bon Jovi and a 12 year old boy from New Hampshire all have in common? I will tell you.
It’s easy to be concerned about a problem in the world and post on social media about it, which a lot of people do. But how many of us can honestly say that when we are concerned about an issue we actually take action in our lives to try and make a difference?
This week’s Kindness Column is about the tragedy of homelessness in our world and I am highlighting the kindness of two ordinary people and one rock star who take action in their lives to help those suffering from homelessness. Homelessness is everywhere in our country and can affect anyone at any time. Just because you may not see homeless people on the streets of your town, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, but according to the website endhomelessness.org, there are more than 568,000 men, women and children experiencing homelessness in the United States as of January 2019.
Sister Mary Scullion of Project HOME in Philadelphia 12 year old Granite Stater Dominic Cole of Percussion for a Purpose and Jon Bon Jovi are three kind and amazing people in this world doing incredible work to help those suffering from homelessness.
Project HOME is one of the best known organizations in the United States that helps provide housing, job opportunities, medical care and education to the homeless. In the late 1980s, Sister Mary Scullion saw that homelessness was a terrible problem for people in the City of Brotherly Love. She and Joan Dawson McConnon started a small organization that later was called Project HOME. Their goal was to provide emergency housing, food, job training and medical care to the homeless in their city. Over the past 30 years, Project HOME has grown from a small, local organization to a large successful organization that other cities use as a model for how to help the homeless in their cities and they have achieved a 95% success rate. This means that of the people who go through Project HOME for help, 95% of them don’t return to being homeless again.
Sister Mary started Project HOME with nothing and she depended on donations for everything at the beginning. She created Project HOME out of her kindness and her passion and over time more people heard about her work and donated to help the cause. In 2009, Sister Mary was named one of Time Magazines 100 most influential people in the world because of her work to help the homeless. She has been invited to the White House, she was President Obama’s choice for a speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast, she has spoken all over the country about her work, she was invited by Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans to be his guest at the State of the Union Presidential address in 2020 and she still works side by side with the homeless everyday in Philadelphia.
Her motto is “none of us are home until all of us are home” and because of her organization, homelessness in Philadelphia is lower than in any other major city in the country. When Sister Mary and Joan Dawson began Project HOME in 1989 there were over 2,000 homeless people on the streets of Philadelphia which is the fourth-largest city in the country. According to the article “The Influential Sister Mary Scullion” by Margaret Gordon Kender, “today there are fewer than 200 homeless in Philadelphia. To put those numbers in perspective, currently 2,000 people live on the streets of New York and 40,000 homeless live in San Francisco. Philadelphia now has the lowest per capita number of homeless people on the street of any city in the world.” Sister Mary has had to fight legal fights to get housing built for the homeless, she has faced criticism and negativity from people who don’t understand her work, but she has never given up her goal to help the homeless in her city. Her kindness has helped her to persevere and makes her a hero to anyone who knows about her.
Jon Bon Jovi is one of those people who says that Sister Mary is a hero to him. He is also one of Sister Mary’s close friends and because of her, he also feels that homelessness is an extremely important issue that we all need to care about. When Sister Mary and Joan Dawson McConnon had the idea to help provide emergency support for a few homeless people on Philadelphia’s streets in the late 1980s they faced a lot of obstacles. But they never gave up. Their kindness and their desire to help others mattered more to them than the struggles they faced. They inspired Bon Jovi to help the homeless, too. He’s donated more than $1 million to Project HOME and he told a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2010 that Sister Mary and Joan Dawson are the “Batman and Robin” of Philadelphia’s streets.
Bon Jovi was so inspired by their work, that in 2006 he founded his own organization called the JBJ Soul Foundation whose mission is “to break the cycle of hunger, poverty and homelessness through developing partnerships, creating programs and providing grant funding to support innovative community benefit organizations.”
Here in New Hampshire, there is another amazing musician doing his part to help the homeless. He is 12-year-old, Dominic Cole. He has turned his passion for helping those less fortunate into an organized cause. Dominic’s motto is “you can be little and do big things” and that is truly what Dominic is doing.
In the summer of 2017 when Dominic was 10, he founded a non profit organization called Percussion For A Purpose. If you go to the Boston Common in Boston on the third Sunday of any month you’ll find Dominic drumming, performing for anyone to see. After he performs, Dominic, his mother and volunteers from all over the Boston area all serve meals in Boston Common to homeless men, women and children in need.
During my interview with Dominic and his mom, Dominic’s mother shared how Percussion For A Purpose began. Dominic has been playing drums for about four years. In the summer of 2017, he was playing drums and performing in the Boston Common just as an opportunity to perform in front of other people. One afternoon a man who was homeless was walking past Dominic and he asked, “would you play something for me?” Dominic says he was happy to do so and he played a few songs for him. The man enjoyed Dominic playing a solo performance for him. When Dominic was finished the man shared that he was once a musician a long time ago but now was homeless. He gave Dominic a quarter as a reward for playing for him. Dominic tried to refuse the money but the man insisted and encouraged Dominic to continue spreading his kindness and his talent. That afternoon on his trip back to his home, Dominic told his mother he wanted to raise money for the homeless and do something to help others.
Dominic now performs in the Boston Common every month and thanks to donations from Panera Bread in Concord and Manchester, local families, colleges, churches and many other businesses and organizations he serves about 300 meals to the homeless on his Percussion for a Purpose Sundays. Dominic also uses any money he receives as donations for his performances to purchase toiletry items for Kindness Kits which he gives out to anyone in need, too. Dominic says that he hopes that his kind actions have a “ripple effect” and influence others to help too.
Dominic and his mother said that Dominic gets a lot of joy out of performing but also gets joy out of knowing that he can make a difference by spreading a little kindness.
When COVID-19 shut down Dominic’s ability to perform in the Boston Common for a while, he started a GoFundMe to raise money to contribute to a local New Hampshire charity in need. To date he has raised more than $4,000 dollars and is hoping to make a donation to one or more charities. Dominic says he would really like to change homelessness and doesn’t understand why there aren’t more resources available to help those in need. Dominic says that he would like to change the stigma that many people have about the homeless because he’s listened to people’s stories and they are not always what people would expect.
It is clear that Sister Mary Scullion, Jon Bon Jovi and Dominic Cole all would agree that it is our responsibility as kind human beings to help others. All it takes is an idea, kindness and perseverance.
This weeks Kindness Challenge is called “Small Things, Great Love.” We can all do small acts each day with love and kindness to help others in need. This weeks Kindness Challenge is simple. Find at least one small thing each day that you can do for someone else and do that one thing with all your heart. Examples might be holding a door for a stranger, cleaning up your sister’s shoes on the floor even though it’s not your job, doing the dishes without being asked, giving a compliment, donating money to a charity, volunteering your time, making a meal for someone in need etc. Do at least one act of loving kindness each day for seven days. Keep track of what you do each day and try to mix it up and do different acts of kindness each day and for different people.
Share your stories and photos of your acts of kindness on Instagram @kindesschallegnenow or on sites.google.com/sau8.org/ kindnesschallenge/home. You can also check out projecthome.org, jbjsf.org and Instagram @percussionforapurpose to learn more about the organizations above.
