Arrested in January 2018 for illegally harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants, Dr. Scott Warren, a volunteer with No More Deaths (also known as No Más Muertes), stood trial on three felony counts in early June. He faced 20 years in prison for his efforts to provide food, water and other essential items to migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert near Ajo, Arizona, an area of the border that is considered particularly dangerous. About 250 migrants die there each year. On June 11, 2019, a Tucson jury, with an 8 to 4 vote, failed to convict Dr. Warren.

Despite low unemployment rates and a fairly strong economy, the number of homeless and food insecure continue to rise. According to the recently released State of the Homeless 2019 report, as of January, in New York City alone, an all-time record number (63,839) of men, women and children slept in shelters each night. And, according to Feeding America, 40-million people struggle with hunger in the U.S., including more than 12-million children.

If you run a shelter or food bank, chances are you have more to do and more to process every day. That’s where having the right social services software can help you focus more on providing food and shelter and less on paperwork and processes.

Positive Tomorrows, an Oklahoma City non-profit, is opening a private school for homeless children that was designed by the kids themselves. That’s right. A private school for homeless (not privileged) children.

Let’s begin 2019 with some good news…

This Christmas Brian Breach got into the spirit of giving, but with a twist; he decided to give to givers. He dressed down as if he were homeless, printed a sign that asked for donations to feed his family at Christmas, and stood in front of a mall with a tin cup. When anyone approached and dropped coins into his cup, he would give them a crisp new $100 bill. “I wanted to recognize the good giving people who would willingly share the little they have to help a stranger in need.” 

In the beautiful red rock canyon setting of Sedona, Arizona, Caroline Diehl works tirelessly in a cold shed every morning before sunrise filling backpacks with food staples to distribute to hungry local school children.

In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In August 2018, there were 62,166 homeless people, including 15,189 homeless families with 22,511 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system. The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 79% higher than it was ten years ago, and families make up three-quarters of the homeless shelter population.

A Former Disney Employee Tells This Story

Yeweinisht Mesfin went missing in November 2016. Her fellow Disneyland employees found her in her car in a gym parking lot. She lived in her car and that gym parking lot was her home. She would use the gym to shower and use the restroom. After suffering a heart attack, she died in her car waiting for someone to find her.

“I was brought up in a household where Christmas meant fun, laughter, presents and lots of food. Christmas was my favorite time of the year,” a social worker, who prefers to remain anonymous, began her Christmas story. “I guess that’s why, when I began my career in social work, it startled me to realize that for most of the children in my care Christmas was a very difficult time.” 

Since the 1870s, social service agencies have been working diligently to find housing for the homeless, yet on a single night in January 2015, 564,708 people were considered homeless in America.

Paul has been “sleeping rough” in Bristol, England for 17 years (Sleeping rough is the British equivalent of our being homeless). An articulate and ruggedly handsome man in his fifties, Paul said simply that after a relationship break down he found himself with no place to live. He began to walk around England and, as he puts it, eventually found himself “at the bottom of the chain.