Above, on the evening of Sept. 6, a small group gathered in the hall of St. George Parish in Waimanalo for light-hearted sharing and a short prayer before dinner as part of the parish’s week of hosting the Family Promise of Hawaii program. Left to right: Volunteers Kepa Pangilinan, Kirk Kamanu, Elsie Jubilee Kamanu, Malulani Kamanu, Emily Thompson, and Family Promise shelter program participant Nisha. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver)
St. George and other Oahu parishes help end homelessness through Family Promise of Hawaii
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
When Nisha* got injured on the job while working as a certified nursing assistant, she found she couldn’t afford the rent on the place she shared with her teenage daughter. Nisha is originally from Trinidad. She left an abusive marriage after moving to Hawaii and now didn’t know exactly where to turn. Instead she called 211 and was directed to a number of programs, including Family Promise of Hawaii.
“I liked their program and felt my daughter would be safer here,” she said, adding it was the first time she’s ever had to be in a situation like this.
Through Family Promise, Nisha and her daughter have been staying with a handful of other homeless families at a rotation of congregations over the last several months, switching sleeping locations each week. While her daughter goes to school, Nisha has been taking phlebotomy classes in the hopes that once she has surgery for her work injury, she can retrain into that new specialty or maybe work as a medical assistant.
She’s been able to work with Family Promise caseworkers to find a new housing situation that will be available in the near future. And in the meantime, she and her daughter have a clean, safe and dry place to sleep each night, access to food, and a central shower/laundry/storage/resource facility they can use in the morning and afternoon.
Nisha said the Family Promise staff and volunteers have been great. Some staffers even come in extra early to the center around 6 a.m. so families can have more time to use the showers.
“Nobody wants to be homeless,” Nisha said. “It’s bad enough we’re in this situation. To not have good people on our side would be worse. But Family Promise, they do keep their promise.”
Family Promise shelter participant Nisha washes her dish after dinner on Sept. 6. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver)
Nisha spoke to the Hawaii Catholic Herald on Sept. 6 while she and her daughter were staying at St. George Church in Waimanalo. The Catholic parish is one of the 65 religious congregations that either host or support a host site for Family Promise on Oahu.
Along with St. George, current Catholic partner congregations are Holy Trinity Parish in Kuliouou, St. Anthony Parish in Kailua, St. Ann Parish in Kaneohe, and St. Augustine by the Sea Parish in Waikiki.
St. George hosts
To look at the outside of St. George Parish in Waimanalo on a recent Friday night, you wouldn’t think much was going. Most of the parking lot was empty and the only lights on were in the community hall. But for that week, the hall was home to three Oahu families experiencing homelessness, including Nisha and her daughter.
That Friday, three families and their host volunteers were enjoying a casual dinner of food donated from St. George parishioners. Baked spaghetti, sweetened ulu, green salad, fried rice, chicken, fruit and green bean casserole were lined up buffet style below a big banner of St. George slaying a dragon.
“We have a very blessed parish,” St. George’s volunteer host site coordinator Malulani Kamanu said. “We never don’t have enough food.”
In fact, parishioners sometimes drop off extra food unannounced. The Food Bank and food establishments like Tucker & Bevvy supplement the volunteer meals with occasional dishes and provide snacks and breakfast foods.
Malulani and her husband, Kirk, set up the food that Friday as they often do. They put out regular plates and cutlery to make the guest families feel more like they are eating at home. Families wash their own dishes, can make a plate from leftovers for lunch the next day, and are welcome to help themselves to anything in the kitchen in the night, just like they would at their own home.
After dinner, the three Family Promise families at St. George relaxed. A baby babbled in a high chair, a young girl played with the Kamanus’ daughters, and some went behind the partitions set up on the other end of the hall where temporary sleeping quarters were set up.
While it’s not ideal to be “moving house” every week for several months at a time, for the families that enter the Family Promise Hawaii program, it’s a way to have a safe, clean and guaranteed place to eat and rest together at the end of the day. It allows them to save money toward a rental security deposit and first month’s rent.
Family Promise has a central location on Kukui Street in Honolulu for showers in the mornings and a space for kids to hang out after school. Caseworkers are on hand to discuss job searches, apartment hunts and other ways families can get support. If the families don’t have transportation, there’s a shuttle to take them to and from the day center.
Host site and support site congregation volunteers contribute food, take turns doing the weekly bedding, help set up and clean up, and stay overnight (one volunteer each evening).
St. George has at least 30 volunteers each time it’s a host parish, with up to five families and 15 people staying there at one time, but usually only two or three families.
If its hosting week falls near a holiday, St. George will do special activities like gingerbread houses for Christmas.
Serving as a family
The Kamanus have been volunteering with Family Promise of Hawaii through St. George for a number of years. About three years ago, they took over as parish coordinators for the family stays.
“There’s a lot of homelessness right here in Waimanalo. My perspective on it is to be a part of the solution, if we can do one little thing,” Malulani said. “We’re helping the working families.”
“Lots of times we get more out of it sometimes than the families themselves,” said Kirk.
The Kamanus’ grown daughter, son and two younger daughters have helped over the years, played with the program kids, and seen firsthand how Family Promise makes a difference.
“It’s always been important for us to teach our children about serving, and the best way to teach them is to model it,” Kirk said. “They see it live and upfront.”
“We can see through our kids that they are getting it,” he said. “When they are here, they see some of the realities of this harsh world.”
“It’s not that they don’t see [homelessness on the island], but it’s nice that they can be a part of the solution to something,” Malulani said.
“Homeless or not, they just play together,” Kirk said of their kids and the Family Promise kids.
Kirk Kamanu sets up dinner on Sept. 6. St. George volunteers like to use regular, not disposable plates and cutlery, to make meals seem more like eating at home for the temporarily homeless families that they host. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver)
The Kamanus’ son, Kepa Pangilinan, 20, has been helping his parents for several years and likes seeing his little sisters playing with the guest kids. “It’s like, those could be my siblings,” he said of the Family Promise children. “There’s no divide with kids. They all play together.”
“Every kid has the potential to become something.”
The Kamanus are looking to enlist a new parish coordinator team from among their volunteers now that Malulani has gone back to work full-time, but they plan to stay involved as regular volunteers. They especially love to hear about families “graduating” from Family Promise and getting their own permanent housing.
“Our parish celebrates when we can share the news that a family has graduated from the program,” Kirk said.
Whitney Blanford, Family Promise of Hawaii’s resource development manager, said she tells congregations that they too benefit from their own generosity.
“It’s as much an opportunity for you and your growth as it is for the families,” she said. “It’s a way to directly impact the lives of families and children that are impacted by homelessness.”
“It’s a wonderful way for them to grow spiritually,” she added. “We’ve never had a congregation that didn’t fall in love with Family Promise.”
Blanford said the program has an 80% average success rate of seeing family’s stay in permanent housing after they graduate. Even higher is the 96% percent success rate of families that keep using Family Promise’s after-care case management and resource services.
Family Promise, which is a national program that came to Hawaii in 2006, is starting up a Central Oahu program, and has already begun offering prevention and diversion services to keep families on the verge of homelessness from becoming homeless. But in order to offer the rotation of temporary shelter to other families, it needs at least 13 congregations and groups to commit to hosting at least twice and ideally four times a year.
“We hope that Wahiawa and the surrounding communities sign on,” Blandford said. She mentioned that Resurrection of the Lord Parish in Waipio has already agreed to be a host site.
A Big Island Family Promise network is in the beginning stages as well.
If your parish is interested in joining the Family Promise of Hawaii network or you’d like to know more about volunteering, email volunteer@familypromisehawaii.org or call 548-7478.
*Last name omitted for privacy.
