Outreach impact
0 +
people connected to services since 2018
0
years of joint outreach work by CCD, Project Home and PPD
0
full-time outreach specialists
Hear from the Team
Mr. Robert Savage, one of our team members who joined CCD as a CSR in 2011 and later joined the Ambassadors of Hope team through his retirement, noted that the role of outreach isn’t dissimilar to the role of a CSR: “Not that I wasn’t doing this work before, but when you join the outreach program, you zero in on that with a little bit more detail, sort of like a surgeon would do… You have your medical doctors, then you have your surgeon focused in specific areas. So working with the homeless became my ‘surgical area.’”
“In my case, it fell into my hands that I take to the streets. That’s my hospital; that’s my shelter… My mother was a missionary in my church. She would visit the sick and the shut-in. So these people that I see on the street are like that. They may not be shut in, but they’re shut out. They’re outside and they have to be given attention, to show them that there is someone out there thinking about them.”
And from Robert’s perspective, the greatest reward is seeing those individuals who resisted getting help, finally accepting it and changing their lives for the better: “I had a guy walk up to me, someone I hadn’t seen him in a while. His name was Franklin, and he saw me and hugged my neck. He said, ‘I just want you to know, I want to thank you for not giving up on me. You never let it go. I’ve moved on to the next step; I have a part time job, I got cleaned up, I have an apartment in South Philadelphia, and I’m presently going to school to be a chiropractor. I just want you to know, you mean a lot to me.’”
Support Our Work
The work done by our outreach team isn’t possible without your support. To learn more about how you can support this invaluable work, please contact foundation@centercityphila.org.
