[NEWS] At Project HOME, providing shelter is just one link in a chain that restores dignity and offers hope | Philly Gives
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
As charming and ebullient as Nephtali Andujar is (lots of hugs, compliments, and gifts of his homemade pottery), the 61-year-old is also pretty blunt about why people should give to Project HOME, one of the city’s largest nonprofit housing agencies.
Because of Project HOME, said Andujar, who spent years living on the streets, he is no longer desperate — desperate to get money to feed a heroin addiction, desperate to scrape $5 together to pay someone to let him drag a discarded mattress into an abandoned house for a night’s sleep out of the rain.
“It’s not just giving someone an apartment,” said Andujar, who sheepishly described a past that included stealing cars and selling drugs. “It’s the snowball effect.
“You are not just helping the homeless,” he said. “You are helping the city. You are helping humanity.”
In the agency’s name, the letters HOME are capitalized, because each letter stands for part of the multipronged approach that Project HOME takes in addressing homelessness and combating poverty for the 15,000-plus people it serves each year.
