Donnie Robinette has spent 14 years doing what he can to help Indianapolis' homeless
By Will Higgins
will.higgins@indystar.com
It's obvious Terry Miles is resourceful. But it's also clear he needs help, and Donnie Robinette offers it to him, gently, unobtrusively.
"Terry, I'm going to bring a doctor around next week, OK?" Robinette said the other day while visiting Miles in the jury-rigged plywood shack along the White River that Miles calls home.
Miles has been homeless most of the past 15 years. Bearded and craggy, he is 54 but looks 64.
He said a doctor would be OK.
"Terry, is there anything else I can do for you?" Robinette asked.
No, nothing. The men shook hands and parted.
Robinette has had countless such exchanges with the city's homeless over the past 14 years. All part of the job -- and a tough one it is.
Robinette, 52, is one of roughly a dozen homeless- outreach workers in Indianapolis and the most senior. His job, short-term, is to keep homeless people alive. Long-term, he tries to persuade them to accept counseling, job training, housing, to coax them to "come in," as he says.
As the weather worsens, the need for proper shelter becomes pressing. But Robinette doesn't push it.
His exchange with Miles is typical of the delicate yet persistent negotiations that can span years.
"You can't judge," said Robinette, who works for the Homeless Initiative Program. "If I said, 'I'm here to save you,' they'd say, 'From what?' I like Terry. I've worked with him four years. He's not ready to come in."
Robinette's understanding of the homeless -- his street knowledge -- is said to be unsurpassed.
"Donnie knows all the nooks and crannies," said Melissa Burgess, who used to work with Robinette and now is a manager at Horizon House homeless day center.
"If I need to know something (about the homeless)," said Sgt. Bob Hipple, of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department's Downtown district, "I ask Donnie."
"Homeless" covers a range of people: from those out of work or underemployed who are "doubling up" temporarily with relatives, to the "chronically" homeless, mostly alcoholic, drug-addicted, mentally ill or all three -- the ones who sleep in the nooks and crannies.
Robinette spends most of his time with the hard-cores. A count earlier this year by Indianapolis' Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) put the "chronically homeless" population at 216.
They've lived outdoors for years, stopping at shelters only long enough for an occasional meal, often getting tanked, sometimes panhandling, sometimes dying.
Read the rest of the story here.
Showing posts with label homelessness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homelessness. Show all posts
Monday, December 14, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Homeless People Learn to Feed Others as Chefs
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Chef Cecil Morris Jr., 46, of Mobile, Ala., knows what it's like to be on both sides of the soup kitchen line.
He was homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1992 when he entered the local Salvation Army's adult rehab center.
After a year in the program, Morris asked the chef in charge of the kitchen to teach him how to cook. That chef gave him the skills he uses today as the culinary arts director at the Salvation Army in his community, which serves more than 400 meals daily.
Morris now teaches other unemployed people his trade. "I believe this is my calling," he says. "I believe I was placed here for a reason. I'm a light to guys who knew me from the street. They see me now, and they see how far I've come."
Across the country, many skilled chefs at homeless shelters and social-service kitchens are offering free culinary arts courses to the homeless, unemployed and underemployed. Most of the chefs teach students the ABCs of working in a professional kitchen — everything from knife skills to sanitation to making soups and sauces. The goal: to help lift people out of poverty and get them back on their feet.
Although there is no official tally on the number of trained chefs working full-time to serve the needy, there may be as many as 500, and an increasing number of them are offering culinary training to unemployed and underemployed clients, says chef Jeff Bacon, 42, of Winston-Salem, N.C. He is on the board of directors for the American Culinary Federation, an organization of professional chefs and cooks.
Sometimes the chefs are volunteers who become employees, and some chefs are "rebounding" from their own problems and want to give back, Bacon says. That's what happened to him.
Bacon spent three years in prison for drug-related offenses, then turned his life around and earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition and food service management. He's now executive chef of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. He's in charge of the preparation of 14,000 meals a month for various shelters and non-profit agencies and teaches a 10-week free culinary arts course.
"God saved me for a reason from the mess I got into, and I would be greatly remiss if I didn't give that back to folks," he says.
He says placing his students in the food service industry isn't always easy because many of them have criminal records and poor work history. At the end of their first year in their cooking jobs, about 65% are still employed, which he says is a commendable number.
It wouldn't be possible to do all this if it were merely a matter of "human function," he says. "It's divine intervention, every class."
Nationwide, other professional chefs are teaching cooking skills to the unemployed:
•Chef Marianne Ali, 52, a former heroin addict, is the director of culinary job training for D.C. Central Kitchen in Washington, one of the first community kitchens to offer culinary classes. She and her staff teach a 12-week course four times a year. About 500 students have completed the program over the past 16 years.
Read the rest of the story here.
Chef Cecil Morris Jr., 46, of Mobile, Ala., knows what it's like to be on both sides of the soup kitchen line.
He was homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1992 when he entered the local Salvation Army's adult rehab center.
After a year in the program, Morris asked the chef in charge of the kitchen to teach him how to cook. That chef gave him the skills he uses today as the culinary arts director at the Salvation Army in his community, which serves more than 400 meals daily.
Morris now teaches other unemployed people his trade. "I believe this is my calling," he says. "I believe I was placed here for a reason. I'm a light to guys who knew me from the street. They see me now, and they see how far I've come."
Across the country, many skilled chefs at homeless shelters and social-service kitchens are offering free culinary arts courses to the homeless, unemployed and underemployed. Most of the chefs teach students the ABCs of working in a professional kitchen — everything from knife skills to sanitation to making soups and sauces. The goal: to help lift people out of poverty and get them back on their feet.
Although there is no official tally on the number of trained chefs working full-time to serve the needy, there may be as many as 500, and an increasing number of them are offering culinary training to unemployed and underemployed clients, says chef Jeff Bacon, 42, of Winston-Salem, N.C. He is on the board of directors for the American Culinary Federation, an organization of professional chefs and cooks.
Sometimes the chefs are volunteers who become employees, and some chefs are "rebounding" from their own problems and want to give back, Bacon says. That's what happened to him.
Bacon spent three years in prison for drug-related offenses, then turned his life around and earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition and food service management. He's now executive chef of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. He's in charge of the preparation of 14,000 meals a month for various shelters and non-profit agencies and teaches a 10-week free culinary arts course.
"God saved me for a reason from the mess I got into, and I would be greatly remiss if I didn't give that back to folks," he says.
He says placing his students in the food service industry isn't always easy because many of them have criminal records and poor work history. At the end of their first year in their cooking jobs, about 65% are still employed, which he says is a commendable number.
It wouldn't be possible to do all this if it were merely a matter of "human function," he says. "It's divine intervention, every class."
Nationwide, other professional chefs are teaching cooking skills to the unemployed:
•Chef Marianne Ali, 52, a former heroin addict, is the director of culinary job training for D.C. Central Kitchen in Washington, one of the first community kitchens to offer culinary classes. She and her staff teach a 12-week course four times a year. About 500 students have completed the program over the past 16 years.
Read the rest of the story here.
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