Bugged

Ever wonder why we post needs for furniture on the Benevolent site? If you’re anything like me, when you moved into your first apartment, you made several trips to local thrift stores to find things like upholstered chairs, recliners, padded kitchen chairs, and couches. It might not have looked like a million dollars, but it served the purpose and it made our apartments feel like home.

Maria “has been sharing a two-bedroom mobile house with her two sisters, their five children, her stepfather and her mother,” says Sizzy West, Maria’s Home Visitor.  Now this young mom has succeeded in moving herself and her daughter into their own apartment and seeks our help in getting the funds she needs to buy furniture for her first-ever living room.  We might wonder why she needs to buy it new, rather than at a thrift store.

There is one simple answer: the reality of bed bugs. No, Maria does NOT have bed bugs, but they are the reason she can’t buy upholstered furniture from a thrift store.

Chicago has been one of the nation’s top cities in bed bug infestation in the last few years – not an honor we relish. Whenever we hear news stories or read articles about how to protect ourselves from bed bugs, they inevitably contain a sentence like this one from Dateline on NBC:

“Do not buy used furniture (especially bedding items or upholstered items), or at least do not bring them into your home until you, or a competent expert, have inspected them carefully for any signs of bed bugs.”

For a struggling earner, this turns the furnishing of a new apartment into a significant expense. It’s no longer a safe option for someone in a situation like Maria’s to purchase a couch from the local thrift store or to accept a contributed or hand-me-down mattress or padded chair.

Nonprofits that might once have accepted donations of furniture to help their newly-housed clients settle in have entirely stopped accepting these contributions. One news story reported: “Most agencies no longer accept donated beds or mattresses to resell or provide to clients in need.” So for Maria new furniture is not a luxury; it’s a necessity.

It would be easy for us to misunderstand someone who, like Maria, asks for help with furniture, and to quietly doubt the validity of her need without speaking up and questioning it. Things have really changed since I bought those tattered green armchairs and that well-worn brown couch back in the 1990s.

This is yet another example of the ways in which the small things can make a big difference.

- megan kashner

  founder & ceo

  Benevolent

  www.benevolent.net

Through Al's Eyes

What do you see when you open the door to your place? When your hand extends to the lock with your key at the ready? If you’re like me, you take the fact that you have a key, a lock, and a door to your own place mostly for granted. Walking into your place seems like no big thing.

When I read an update that one of our recipients, Al, sent in this month, I started seeing my own front door differently. Here’s what he said abou the support he received from Benevolent and all the work that the nonprofit Inspiration Corporation did with and for him:

“I can’t believe that with the help of Benevolent and Inspiration I was able to turn my life completely around. I have a great job and a place to live where I pay my own rent. What a feeling. It’s nice to see that there are still people and programs out there that still care and don’t think that homeless people aren’t worth helping. For those people who donated thank you so much. For those who are still out on the street don’t give up - don’t ever give up.”

Reading that message, I suddenly saw things through Al’s eyes. Pictured him coming home from his job as a waiter in a restaurant, wearing the work clothes that Benevolent donors helped provide, pulling keys out of his pocket, turning the lock, and stepping into his own place. The image and the feelings that went with it were overpowering.  Picturing this new reality through Al’s eyes – the transition from jobless and homeless to employed and housed – made it all powerfully real.

Try it. Imagine that you’re Amaya and you’re getting ready to pack up for college – packing yourself and your daughter. Imagine that you’ve just heard that 25 people contributed the funds to pay for your security deposit for your college housing.

Imagine that you’re Toya, the oldest of a family of refugees from Bhutan, trying to acclimate to life in the U.S. and to help your parents and siblings navigate a new country, new language, city life, and more. Imagine the relief of receiving the computer that will help you all to establish yourselves here and then the sheer sensory overload once you start to take it all in.

It’s a cool and mind-expanding exercise, this seeing things through other people’s eyes.  I hope you’ll try it.

- megan kashner

  founder & ceo

  benevolent

  www.benevolent.net

Only 2% Make It - We Can Help

Amayah is a teen mom
headed off to college this fall

She came to the US five years ago, when she was about 12. She made her way through a new country, culture, school system, and more. Now she's headed off to Southern Illinois University in the fall, full of promise and expectations.

The American Dream: believing in yourself; overcoming expectations and obstacles; succeeding through hard work. Amayah is all that, and more.

Amayah is also a teen mom. She's nothing like the flashy and combative young moms we see on reality TV. She’s the real deal - the young woman who had a child at 16, kept on going to school, is graduating and is heading to college without missing a beat. She's got her future in clear focus, and she's got her baby's future in mind as well - a balancing act that many parents decades older than Amayah have not mastered.

Right now, though -- this is when it gets hard. Amayah has challenges to face as she heads off to college that the other young students won't be burdened by. She'll need to find housing suitable to a small family, child care, and time to cook for, read to, play with, and care for her child. She'll have to plan her course schedule and her study groups around her child's timetable and then there will be other things that crop up - a babysitter bailing, her child getting a fever, or the stroller refusing to open.

Amayah is asking the Benevolent community for help with one singular challenge: for help paying her housing deposit and getting her apartment set up for herself and her child. I hope we'll meet this challenge and step up for Amayah. More importantly, I hope we'll be able to jump back in future years if another big challenge pops up. Maybe create a community of support just for Amayah. 

On average, about half of all teen moms finish high school. Another 15% will get their GED by the time they're 22. Only two percent - 2% - of teen moms complete college by the time they're 30. Those are ridiculously long odds. 

Let's step up, step in and become a part of Amayah's story, and let's hang out there for a while to keep an eye on her success and be there when she needs us.

Who's in?

- megan kashner, founder & CEO