Mid Rivers Newsmagazine 5-3-17

10 I NEWS I
May 3, 2017
MID RIVERS NEWSMAGAZINE
@MIDRIVERSNEWS
MIDRIVERSNEWSMAGAZINE.COM
Agency asks homeless to tell their stories through photography
By BRIAN FLINCHPAUGH
For a few weeks in April, 100 residents
of three counties were asked to capture a
glimpse of what it looks like to be homeless
– telling their stories via photography
from the streets.
Residents from St. Charles, Lincoln and
Warren counties – all of whom are homeless
– were equipped with 100 disposable
cameras, beginning April 18, and asked to
document their lives. The cameras were
collected on April 26 so that the photos
could be reviewed by a panel of seven
judges who will select the top 20. Those
photos will be exhibited June 29 through
Aug. 20 at the St. Peters Cultural Arts
Centre and the public will be asked to vote
for the best one by way of online donations.
At a dinner auction on Aug. 19, three
winners will be announced and the top 20
framed photographs will be auctioned to
raise funds for Sts. Joachim and Ann Care
Service programs that help people in need.
A traveling exhibit featuring other photographs
from the project will be displayed
locally at churches, schools and libraries.
Participants who completed the photo
assignment received backpacks filled with
basic supplies and gift cards for food. The
photographers of the three top photos will
also receive prizes.
The project, called “In Plain Sight –
Homelessness Exposed,” is sponsored by
Sts. Joachim and Ann Care Services, with
a group of other co-sponsors that include
Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital, Progress
West Hospital, Ameren Missouri, Calvary
Church and Behlmann Automotive
- Troy. It is more than a fundraising event,
organizers say. The idea also is to illustrate
the harsh realities of poverty even in
a prosperous and growing suburban area
where many think it does not exist.
Pam Struckhoff, director of program
services for Sts. Joachim and Ann Care
Service, perhaps the largest social service
provider in the three-county area, said she
worked with a man last August who she
first saw sitting in front of a gas station on
a hot day when she drove along Muegge
Road near Hwy. 94.
“He had been sitting up there for a week
and I stopped one day and I had my daughter
with me and she almost had a fit. ‘Why
are you talking to strange men?’ she asked.
That’s my job,” Struckhoff said. “He was
just sitting there with a cup of ice. He was
just sweating and sweating – he was going
to die out there.”
Struckhoff took her daughter home, got
the man a hotel room and eventually got
him into more permanent housing. “What
struck me was everybody kept saying, ‘Well
there’s no homeless people in this community
– I don’t ever see homeless people.’
These are people who live on my block.
And I said, ‘You drive by this area every
day. He sat out there every day – some of
the Ameren contractors would take him on
jobs – he sat there every day and nobody
saw him? Do you choose not to see him or
did you really not see him?’ It’s very hard
not to see.”
Giving people an inside view of the lives
of homeless individuals and families may
open more eyes, Struckhoff said. To do this,
the agency “street team,” which actively
works with the homeless,
identified about 100
persons who they thought
might be willing to take
a small Fuji Film camera
and capture their lives.
The cameras were given
out to a diverse group of
people – seniors, single
men and women, families –
at soup kitchens, churches
and other locations. The
participants were given a
quick tutorial and told to
bring back the camera in
about a week.
“What we’re asking them
is what you want people
to know,” Struckhoff said.
“Take pictures of what you
want people to know about
your lives because I think there is such a
stereotype that surrounds homelessness.
These are regular people like you and me
and their lives are just different, they just
happen to live on the streets.”
Some homeless individuals have jobs
that don’t pay very much. Some live in
tents in the woods, at shelters, with relatives
or friends, under bridges, near public
parks and in cars. Struckhoff said homeless
people often are underemployed or
unemployed, many don’t have high school
diplomas and some are victims of “generational
poverty.” They grew up like this and
it’s what they know, she said.
“What strikes me is that these are people
who are just like you and me, and you look
at them and you think, ‘Wow, how this
[shutterstock.com photo]
did happen’ because you know they were
loved, they had a mother or father or somebody
in their life who loved them and they
are out here on the streets and it is a hard
life,” Struckhoff said. “We always hear
that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,
unfortunately, we all don’t have the
same boots.”
Struckhoff hopes the project will be a
way to educate people about the need in
the tri-county area and reach potential
donors – perhaps even someone who could
donate housing. This year, the agency has
helped in providing housing for 90 to 100
people in the tri-county area at a cost of
about $100,000. “That’s a lot of money [to
raise],” she said. “If you do the same thing
[same type of fundraising] over and over
again, people stop listening to you.”
Program to keep ex-cons out of prison cuts ribbon on new headquarters
By BRIAN FLINCHPAUGH
An April 25 ribbon-cutting represented
several milestones for a St. Louis regional
initiative to prevent ex-cons from returning
to prison, including a step toward what
organizers hope will become a national
effort in a few years.
The effort by Concordance Academy of
Leadership, a St. Louis-based nonprofit,
drew hopeful comments from local government
officials and business representatives.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, St.
Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann
and St. Louis County Director of Community
Empowerment Ethel Byndom
[standing in for St. Louis County Executive
Steve Stenger] participated. The three
local governments have agreed to provide
a combined $2 million to support programming
over the next three years.
The academy’s 31,000-square-foot facility
in a Maryland Heights industrial park
will be the activity hub for 250 parolees
who are expected to be enrolled in the
program through 2019, with further expansions
planned.
The facility will provide a one-stop shop
for therapy sessions, career readiness training
and educational classes, assistance
with housing and other issues. Participants
will work with counselors and community
support specialists, join in volunteer activities
and work on job placement.
Danny Ludeman, president and chief
executive officer of Concordance and
former president of Wells Fargo Advisors,
has been the driving force behind the initiative,
which began in 2015. He described
the St. Louis area as “leading the nation in
dramatically reducing incarceration rates.”
The academy’s efforts may allow individuals
and families “an opportunity to
really achieve what we all want – having
a joyful and productive life with our loved
ones and friends,” Ludeman told attendees
at the ceremony inside the renovated facility
at 1845 Borman Court.
The academy hopes to help end the cycle
by which millions of children, who have
at least one parent in prison, face a 70 percent
chance of going to prison themselves,
Ludeman said.
Achieving those objectives will have an
effect on other issues, including spurring
economic stimulus, lowering crime and
increasing public safety. “Sixty to 65 percent
of all crime committed in this region
is committed by formerly incarcerated
individuals,” Ludeman said.
The ceremony also marked the enrollment
of 100 participants in the program.
Concordance officials said past participants
who completed the curriculum now
have jobs, or job offers, paying a livable
wage. Chris Sommers, co-owner of Pi Pizzeria,
spoke of how well Concordance participants
hired by his company had done.
Ludeman said the academy currently
adds 42 participants every other month and
hopes to reach 250 in the next three years,
then scale up to 1,000 people annually by
2020 and expand to Kansas City and four
other states.
“In 2027, we plan to have offices in every
state across the country,” Ludeman said.
He said the academy hopes to reduce a
“horrific statistic” that 77 percent of prisoners
released return to prison in a five-year
period. “That number has not budged one
iota in 30 years,” he said.
Why it has not moved is two-fold, Lude-
See EX-CONS, page 14