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Thank you to those who supported and attended the 2016 Spirit of Georgetown on Oct. 13! 185 guests enjoyed a beautiful evening honoring Patricia Davies for her commitment to helping homeless individuals in Georgetown. With the help of our supportive community showing their Georgetown Spirit, we raised $100,358!

Board President, Alex Bullock, spoke about the importance and the impact of GMC’s Day Center, Winter Shelter and Street Outreach programs. Sabrina Burrell, GMC case manager, shared a recent success story about a GMC guest moving into permanent housing. In the last 16 months, through a massive community effort, GMC advocated for guests and collaborated with other providers to help move 32 people into permanent housing. Nine are at the door of housing and seven are a work in progress. It is the generosity of our supporters that makes this work possible!

Bullock then presented Patricia Davies with the 2016 Freddie, our humanitarian award named to memorialize a homeless man who died in a phone booth in Georgetown and whose death led to the founding of GMC.

Pat Davies has demonstrated unyielding dedication and leadership on behalf of Georgetown Ministry Center since 2007. She is a tireless advocate for individuals experiencing homelessness and has been a leader and a friend to all who are involved with GMC, most importantly to those who depend on the Center for a sense of belonging each day.

So many people were instrumental in the success of this event, and we are grateful. Karen and Bill Sonneborn graciously hosted the event in their stunning home and garden. Event Co-chair, Megan Gabriel, welcomed guests to the Spirit of Georgetown and thanked them for their support of Georgetown Ministry Center. The generosity of our sponsors and event attendees was certainly celebrated as well! We also owe a big thank you to Broad Branch Market, partyhands, Sperry Tents and Washington Fine Properties for their help with the event, and to our corporate sponsors: Walker & Dunlop LLC, CSC Leasing Company, Washington Fine Properties, John D. Richardson Company and Martin’s Tavern.

You can read more about the Spirit on the Georgetown Dish.

We’d love to see your pictures from the Spirit! Please send them to sarah@gmcgt.org

Please take a minute to advocate for better laws for people who are struggling with severe mental illness.  We clipped the entire body verbatim from an email from Mental Illness Policy Org.

An exceedingly important bill may get heard in the Senate this week, but only if enough people who care about the seriously ill, call and email the two Senate leaders today and tomorrow.

Please call the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at (202) 224-2541 and the Democrat’s Senate Leader, Harry Reid at (202) 224-3542 today. Ask them to pass the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR2646) which passed the House in a 422-2 BIPARTISAN vote. The Senate can create such a bill by combining the Mental HealthReform Act (S 2680) with the Mental Health and Safe Cities Act (S. 2002).

The point is any mental health bill has to have provisions to help the seriously mentallyill.  That includes more hospital beds, telling the Substance Abuse and Mental HealthServices Administration (SAMHSA) to focus on the  seriously ill, funding Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT, Kendra’s Law and Laura’s Law), and fixing problems in HIPAA that allow doctors to shut parents out of helping their loved ones.

After you call, use the email contact form to email your message to Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. Senator Reid’s is at http://www.reid.senate.gov/contact and Senator McConnells is at https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/publ…/index.cfm/contactform

Finally, you  can also tweet to Senator Mitch McConnell (@SenateMajLdr) and Harry Reid (@SenatorReid)

Please act today AND tomorrow (Tue./Wed.) Thank you. We are the only ones who care about the most seriously mentally ill so we have to be the ones to make the calls.

Mental Illness Policy Org.
50 East 129 St., PH7
New York, NY 10035
USA

By Gil Rosen

For the last year I have had the privilege of volunteering at Georgetown Ministry Center.  What began as a desire to use my cooking skills to help feed homeless men and women has turned into a passion of connecting with others.

Being involved with GMC has introduced me to something Gunther Stern mentioned at our first meeting. Gunther suggested that while food and shelter are a challenge to the homeless population, the biggest hurdle is mental health.

Gunther’s  statement resonated with me on a deeply profound and personal level. As such, I have created a program that attempts to offer people the opportunity to benefit from the one thing that helped me cope throughout my travails—namely, love! While I can never offer the tremendous support that my nuclear family and community offered to me, I can offer one of the chief ways through which that love was expressed: food.  

My friend Wynne Sitrin and I have tried to make our Thursday lunches a model for how we can share love with the guests at GMC. We have prepared and served meals for the past year and found the process both rewarding and  therapeutic (nothing like sharing love to make you feel loving).

In this vein, we would like to invite other members of the community to prepare and serve meals at GMC. You do not need much time—just a willingness to roll your sleeves up and cook.

Wynnie and I may have some helpful hints, but it is ultimately pretty straight forward. To make the meals we generally buy the ingredients from supermarkets. We prepare the meals at home and serve them the same day. This project has been an incredibly rewarding experience and we would love some help. You can help in three ways: cooking, procuring food, and coordination.

We are looking at expanding and streamlining a program we started with Norman’s Farm Market.  John Norman has generously donated some of the fresh fruits and vegetables that we serve on Thursdays and we would love to coordinate a way of using the “extras” to create nutritious food for the center on other days.

Also, we need additional cooks who would be willing to take up other days.  Already a group of women who call themselves “Women Who Hike” began a similar program on Tuesdays—we are both vying for top ratings from the GMC food critics. 🙂

Finally we need a way to coordinate this program so that we can ensure regular meals at GMC.  If you are interested in contributing to this endeavor please reach out to me at (301) 980-1139.  

On a completely different note, I have also been conducting a beading/story sharing workshop on Tuesdays. If you have old costume jewelry or beads lying around the house please donate them to our program. If the beads have a story, please join us to share both the beads and your story. We meet at the Grace Church courtyard on Tuesdays at 10:30.

As part of the beading for change program, we begana scavenger hunt. We want to encourage members of the community to come to the garden and find the bracelets that we bead. If you are interested in participating in this game, these are the guidelines.  Every Tuesday we will hide grace bracelets (these sacred bracelets are beaded in a pattern that reminds the wearer that only through divine grace, love, and action can we bring change to the world). Participants should wear the bracelets as a reminder that it is through our individual  actions that the world will change.

One meal and one bead at a time.

George was homeless for so many years he stopped counting. Born in Aiken, South Carolina in 1957, he bounced around on the east coast and either slept in shelters or on park benches for most of his adult life. He said it was rough, but he endured and relied on his faith to get him through. Everything changed for him when help came from Georgetown Ministry Center and our collaborator, Miriam’s Kitchen. GMC and Miriam’s Kitchen’s case managers helped George get the proper documentation to receive a housing voucher from the city. Now George no longer has to hurry to homeless shelters each afternoon hoping there is still space for him. This summer he moved into his very own apartment!

“It’s a beautiful place. Hardwood floors, fantastic atmosphere and a panoramic view of the city,” George said, beaming ear to ear. The affordable senior apartment building that George calls home opened in June 2016 and he loves everything about it. He said the lobby is as glamorous as one you would find in a nice hotel. He is enjoying his television set, his comfortable bed and the kitchen. He said he no longer has to worry about safety or lack of sleep and he gets to enjoy one of his favorite hobbies. “I love to cook and am thankful for all the donations that filled this kitchen and the rest of the place up.”

“I feel really proud to have a place like this to call home. It’s a good feeling and is really a blessing,” George said. In fact he is so grateful, he said he even enjoys and takes pride in polishing the furniture. Since moving into housing George has kept in touch with GMC and helps clean the center every Friday afternoon. He is determined to find a job and often asks GMC staff and volunteers for help with his resume and job applications. He is also making plans for his granddaughter’s birthday: cake, ice cream and, of course, a tour of his new home.

All of us at GMC want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who came out to our DoMore24 MixxedFit event, donated to support our work, or told your friends and coworkers about GMC! You all made DoMore24 a success. We couldn’t do any of our work to end homelessness one person at a time without you, so thank you!

Check out a few pictures from the day. A special thank you to the Georgetown BID for providing the sound system, Grace Episcopal Church for letting us use the churchyard, and to Sabrina Burrell, Samuel Washington, and Tiffancy Barnes, our instructors for the afternoon. Get excited for another DoMore24 next year! You can mark your calendars for June 2, 2017.