A week ago, I met with Rev. Tony Marciano for breakfast at the newly constructed Community Matters Cafe in uptown Charlotte. It sits right next to Charlotte Rescue Mission, an organization that helps homeless men who have addictions. Tony heads up the organization. He told me that once the men have graduated from the 120-day addiction program, they can be trained for 4 months there at the Cafe to get experience in the restaurant business to later enable them to find an outside job. Very, very cool.
Tony and I had met for the first time a couple weeks ago at a breakfast fundraiser put on by Urban Ministries and the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte. At the fundraiser, he invited me to breakfast so I could check out the new cafe and so he could tell me what Charlotte Rescue Mission was all about.
Towards the end of our Cafe breakfast meeting, he asked me how I became interested and involved with the homelessness issue in Charlotte. I told him I volunteered at the Men’s Shelter as a greeter a few weeks out of the year when I take time off of work. I also told him about Project Freeze Pop. After I described a few of my freeze pop outings, Tony said, “Do you realize you gave these people a gift? You gave them the gift of being able to make a choice. Homeless folks rarely get to choose – they take what they are given, or they don’t take it at all. But giving them a choice of what color or flavor freeze pop they want makes them feel valued.” I had never looked at it that way!