Sunday, March 26, 2000
West End Center is mall for needy
Nine agencies provide food, clothes, jobs, support
BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Chris Boller and Jonathan Crawford, two homeless men, came in for lunch Wednesday at the West End Center but left with a pair of job referrals and a lead on an affordable apartment.
“Cool place,” said Mr. Crawford, 19, a native Texan.
The center, in a former convent on Ezzard Charles Drive, is one of a kind in the Tristate. Nine agencies offer assistance under one roof.
It's a social service mall of sorts. Think one-stop shopping. Four floors and no waiting. There's even a makeshift food court.
Its setup appeals to many people in the neighborhood. Consider Dorothy Trimble.
Formerly homeless, the 44-year-old woman came into the West End Emergency Center for food several years ago. She started to volunteer at the center, which led to a job she still has at the FreeStore/FoodBank.
She always wanted to own a home. She was able to buy through a program with the center-based Community Land Cooperative of Cincinnati. Two of her friends have also purchased homes through the cooperative.
“The center is a blessing,” Ms. Trimble said. “It doesn't just help you with food and clothing, it helps you every step of the way up.”
In this age of welfare reform, some Hamilton County social service agencies have put several programs — such as job training, child care and transportation assistance — in the same location to improve client accessibility.
That idea was borrowed, in some ways, from mom-and-pop agencies that had to collaborate with other service providers and share overhead such as copy machines and boardroom space. Even the same phone number.
Smaller groups offer individualized attention that's designed to foster self-sufficiency.
The West End Center is such a place.
A sewing business, Women on Track Inc., is down the hall from West End Catering, which is a floor below the Genesis Men's Program and two stories below the Adult Literacy Program of the Catholic Brothers of the Poor of Saint Francis.
There's an emergency food and clothing agency in the basement.
A byproduct of the agencies' physical closeness is the community of people that has taken shape. The center is community where community has been fractured by poverty. Referrals are regular. Walk-ins are welcome.
Neighborhood residents are drawn to the building to work or volunteer. Esther Colquitt is manager of the catering company and contact for another agency in the building, People Interested in People, which organizes and provides van rides for relatives to visit Ohio prison inmates.
“We're one big family here,” Ms. Colquitt said one recent afternoon after returning from a catering job that fed 55 people at Our Lady of Visitation Church in Mack.
However, that meant she missed lunch in the building. Agency executives and staff eat every day with clients and people who wander in off the street. A free lunch is served at noon and diners sit nine or 12 at a time around a large table in the catering business kitchen.
Wednesday's menu was pork barbecue sandwiches and cider.
Wednesday's lunch topic was the serious illness of a disabled adult who had been adopted and brought up by friends of Kay Smith, director of the land cooperative.
“That's really nice how they gave him a good life,” Mr. Crawford said after Ms. Smith told the group about the family.
Then Ms. Smith and Judy Tensing asked the homeless men about their lives.
Sister Tensing is a member of the Notre Dame de Namur order and runs its mission volunteer program in conjunction with the national AmeriCorps service program.
Center-based AmeriCorps volunteers work in the catering business and as tutors in inner-city elementary schools.
Mr. Crawford and his friend, Mr. Boller, said they didn't have jobs now.
From across the large, square wooden table, Ms. Smith spoke up. “We have day work, some odds and ends, that need to be done. Are you interested? Come up to the office and let me give you my card.”
Sister Tensing told the men they are welcome for lunch any time and said other programs in the building — the emergency center and catering business — needed workers.
The men walked down the center hallway with Sister Tensing to leave their names and shelter phone number. Mr. Crawford walked upstairs to Ms. Smith's office.
Mr. Boller, 28, went outside to smoke a cigarette. “They were nice to us,” he said. “We might take them up.”
Then they walked away, saying goodbye to Christine Crutcher, 49, who was working at two clothing tables on the sidewalk out front. She had hung shirts on hangers on the black metal fence.
“They're a quarter, or if somebody has only a dime, they're a dime,” said Ms. Crutcher, who supports herself on disability payments.
She doesn't earn money at the center; she volunteers three days a week. But she gets paid in another way.
“We are one big family,” Ms. Crutcher said. “I meet interesting people every day I'm here.”
The clothing sale was a fund-raiser for the West End Emergency Center, founded in 1984 by West End churches to provide clothing, food and household items.
Sister Tensing is director of the emergency shelter. She's the glue who holds the building together and has set its open tone. She came up with the idea and doesn't know of another place like it in the region.
“We work at it,” she said. “We want to have a place where people from the neighborhood can come and feel comfortable. Agency people can get stuck in their offices and lose touch with the people they're supposed to serve. We don't want that to happen.
“We've screened some people (agencies) who didn't want to be a part of it. It's not for everybody. We have our bad days.”
Sister Tensing and Barbara Wheeler, a Dominican Sister of Hope, are co-founders of an agency called Power Inspires Progress.
They wanted to create opportunities for people to learn a work ethic and gain employment experience. The agency, which has offices in the center, also operates a restaurant, Venice Pizza, in University Heights.
Power Inspires Progress, which maintains the building and rents it for a few dollars a month from the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, also gave birth to West End Catering and Women on Track.
Women on Track is now independent and employing four women, including director Teresa Schleich. Eleven sewing machines are crammed into a former classroom in the front of the building. Chug-chug clicking can be heard on the sidewalk when automobile traffic is still.
The company makes covers for a quilt company in New York, vests for caterers, bags for people who sell the Street Vibes newspaper, tote bags for Notre Dame sisters and pillows for students at neighboring St. Joseph Elementary. Free sewing classes are 6-8 p.m. Wednesday.
Jada Watson, a single mother of three sons from Price Hill, works 20 hours a week at Women on Track and says she's gaining experience and confidence that will help her land a full-time job with benefits.
“I've learned how to work with patterns, a lot of stuff,” said Ms. Watson, 35, who hopes to move off public assistance.
Ms. Watson also has other prospects. She has been in contact with Mattel Inc., which makes Barbie dolls. She has made Barbie clothes as a hobby for years, and is preparing a showing for a Mattel executive.
As she sewed, Brother William Anuszkiewicz said goodbye to the women as he walked out of the building to “cruise” the neighborhood in search of people he might help. He runs the adult literacy program that's the West End Center's newest tenant. Sister Tensing gave up her office so the Brothers could move their program in.
The literacy program serves about 170 prisoners a year in the Hamilton County Justice Center and recently developed a joint venture with the Genesis Men's Program and West End Catering.
Genesis helps some 70 men a year organize their lives with education, fellowship and employment services upon their release from prison. It recently started a program for boys ages 6-8.
Genesis Director Wendell Ellis said clients like the building's homey feel. Agencies thrive on it.
“We're stronger together in this building,” he said, “than we would be apart.”
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