Home Visit Highlight: SVdP Delivers Hope for the Holidays to Long Island Family
No family deserves to spend the holidays sharing one mattress on the floor of their apartment.
Josephine Melton-McGovern and Marianne Simpson, two volunteers for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, couldn’t believe what they saw last November when they first stepped inside the apartment of a family of four in Long Island. The room was barren—no furniture in sight, just a single mattress where the mother, father, and their two young children, a two-year-old and a four-month-old, all slept together.
“I saw it as a safety issue, especially for the four-month-old,” said Josephine. “I explained it to the mother, and she was all ears. She understood what I was saying.”
That same day, Josephine and Marianne helped deliver a donated portable crib for the baby. The next day, they stocked the family’s shelves with food and drawers with clothing. Within three days, the family’s apartment was fully furnished with a new mattress, box spring, and frame, along with blankets, sheets, pillows, two dressers, a sofa, end tables, a coffee table, and a kitchen table with chairs.
Two days later, the family also enjoyed a real Thanksgiving dinner, thanks to a turkey and fixings provided by SVdP.
“All [the mother] kept saying was ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ They were so grateful. We were so glad they had a nice Thanksgiving – I was so worried about that.”
As part of their Vincentian charism, Josephine and Marianne serve families like this every day. They know that a lack of bare necessities is the grim reality for many who have lost their homes or are on the brink of homelessness. This family had recently moved out of a shelter and into an apartment—a success story in the minds of many organizations. But they had also lost all their belongings due to a roach infestation.
Marianne and Josephine visited the family as part of a Home Visit Encounter, a core tenet of SVdP’s work. In the Home Visit, Vincentians go in pairs to visit those they serve. In doing so, they are able to assess the family’s situation in a way that many other charitable organizations are not. Because of that Home Visit, Marianne and Josephine were able to discern that the family needed more than just a new mattress.
Michael Bedell, president of the St. Frances Cabrini Conference for SVdP, learned of the Long Island family’s needs from a questionnaire they filled out on the organization’s website. He then gave them a call to get more information and schedule a Home Visit. The family is one of 65 that he and his Conference have administered Home Visits for in the last year.
“We’re calling each family and are basically saying to them, ‘Is there anything we can do for you during the holidays?’” said Michael. “It might be a ham, it could be a toy, it could be anything … but we try to put those touches on people so they can have a good holiday. We also recognize that Christmas can’t end in December. It’s got to go all year round.”
And it does. Every day, SVdP Councils and Conferences all over the globe are helping individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness – through services such as rent and utility assistance, shelters, food pantries, thrift stores, pharmacies and medical clinics, and much more.
For Marianne, the Home Visits particularly hit home.
“I feel so fortunate to help because I’ve been in that situation – I raised five children on my own,” Marianne said. “I know what it’s like to have to reach out, go to the church, go to social services – all of those things. The more people that I can help to not have to go through that, the more it makes me feel good.”
SVdP USA flips the traditional model of a nonprofit in the homelessness services sector. Instead of vulnerable individuals having to go out and seek things like food, clothing, and support, SVdP’s Vincentian volunteers come to them via the Home Visit, providing tangible assistance, a listening ear, and friendship.
Bedell says it’s the instinct of a Vincentian to go out and serve.
“We all do it from our hearts with no expectations,” he said. “But when we give, we also receive back. We all close our eyes at night knowing that we changed a life. There is no better feeling in the world and it is a feeling more people should seek.”
