Neil

Neil was hired into our temporary worker pool since the time of this interview

by Nikki Jardin, former Cafe Operations Manager

Neil has been a customer of Sisters Of The Road for several years now and participates frequently in our barter program. Through conversations with former community organizer, Patrick Nolen, our Community Organizer, he has recently become an active member of our Civic Action Group (CAG), and was eager to share his views on this new work.

“This is my first involvement with CAG. Patrick and I have been talking about it and he asked me to come to the meetings, which I have and feel pretty empowered by it.

“A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us went to a workshop on Non-violent Communication (facilitated by PSU Professor Tom Hastings). It was great. They were impressed with the fact that 7 people out of the 20 that went were from Sisters Of The Road. It was a good connection because they were looking for help with an action they are doing next week. I’m going to show up to help them out; I believe in that cause but I also want to get to know these folks so maybe next time CAG does an action, we might be able to get some help from them.

“And it’s not just the actions. Learning about the non-violent communication has helped me in certain situations. I have been that angry guy out in the street, but not in a way that has ever gotten results.” He laughs.  “I don’t want to be that guy.”

Last week CAG hosted a focus group with Sally Erickson from the Coordinating Committee to End Homelessness at the Bureau of Housing and Community Development, in order to discuss homeless access to services and how the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness and the BHCD are involved. Neil participated in this focus group and was particularly interested in the topic of the proposed day center for Downtown Portland.

“You know, it felt good to get up and say ‘hi, my name is Neil, I’m homeless and here’s what I have to say about this.’

“I’ve heard a lot of people say that the day center would be good because it would ‘assimilate’ people and get them off the streets. I was able to say ‘hey, we don’t want to be hidden, we want to be an example of positive change. We want to create a place that can empower people, you know, let people know that if afforded the opportunity to change, there are going to be those that take that opportunity to better themselves. Maybe we can create a group of folks from the center that makes a commitment to adopt a block or a park to help beautify the city, that sort of thing.  I want to show that we can give back too.”