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The Evangelist spent time with three people who have struggled with the anti-poverty priority areas established by Catholic Charities USA: income, education, hunger, health and housing.


JAMAICA NATIVE NOW SELF-SUFFICIENT
Terry-Ann McKenzie, 31, knew she needed help when her husband got physically abusive.

"I decided I deserved better than that," she said.

So Ms. McKenzie, a native of Jamaica, took her two children to a shelter for four months - where she heard about Catholic Charities.

Caseworkers helped her with her citizenship papers, got her counseling and found her an apartment in Albany. A few apartments later, she's paying less than $600 a month in rent and living comfortably.

"I live within my means, not above," she explained.

Ms. McKenzie is a health unit coordinator at Albany Medical Center and takes pride in being independent. She remembers her years in Jamaica, when government assistance was rare and most help came from family and neighbors. People grew fruits and vegetables in their yards.

While gratified by the help she's received in the Albany Diocese, she has also declined some of it. Still, Catholic Charities fills some of the gaps with Christmas gifts and Thanksgiving food baskets.

"I don't really ask for much; but I know if I did, it's there for me," she said.

Ms. McKenzie's next goal is to go back to school to become an ultrasound technician. That salary, she said, should help send her kids to college.


MOTHER TO MANY THRIVES WITH HELP
At 42, Paula Perry has rallied against a lifelong cycle of poverty and raised three generations of children. Catholic Charities was there to help.

Over the years, the agency gave her gas money, clothing, food vouchers. They helped her find a car through Wheels to Work. Volunteers hung curtains and stocked cabinets in her apartment. Caseworkers counseled her children.

When Ms. Perry's sister died, Catholic Charities helped her travel to South Carolina to claim the body. And when her daughter, Andrea, and her unborn grandson died last fall, Catholic Charities was among many who gave support and flowers.

"Catholic Charities has been a great part of my life," Ms. Perry told The Evangelist.

Using federal housing assistance, Ms. Perry currently lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Albany with her 14-year-old daughter, Miasa, and her two granddaughters, Honesty, 5, and Chastity, 3.

Ms. Perry has worked as a nursing assistant for patients with brain injuries at Belvedere of Albany for five years - but the road here was a bumpy one.

During her childhood in the Bronx, Ms. Perry and six siblings lived with her mother and her mother's nine siblings. She endured sexual abuse, poverty and her mother's addiction.

Ms. Perry left school to cook and clean for her younger siblings. She left home at 13 and became pregnant at 15. She lived in Catholic maternity shelters and attended a program for unwed mothers. A caseworker there made a difference.

Empowered
"She told me I have a choice and the choices I was given, I didn't have to settle for," she said.

Staff helped her into a one-bedroom apartment, where she took care of her two children and two of her younger siblings. They never missed a meal. Ms. Perry married, had Andrea, divorced her husband for cause, and then parceled out the children so she could seek treatment for cocaine addiction. She entered a women's shelter for eight months and attended 12-step meetings.

Then someone in a Brooklyn shelter told her about Catholic Charities in Albany: "I said, 'Catholic Charities? The nuns took care of me all my life!'"

She moved to the Albany Diocese and got involved with Community Maternity Services, a Catholic Charities agency that helps young, unmarried and pregnant mothers. She attended art therapy classes at the Damien Center and moved to Mercy House, a Catholic Charities women's shelter. She found a Baptist church, repented her sins and was baptized.

With effort and patience, Ms. Perry pulled her family together. She found public housing in Albany, worked as a home health aide and began earning her GED.

Next generation
Ms. Perry sent her children to drug awareness programs and 12-step groups as well. "I said to them, 'I'm going to give you the one thing that was not given to me, and that's education,'" she said.

Neighborhood children slept on her couch and ate her food. A woman who went through the same treatment programs died and left her child to Ms. Perry, so she raised that girl, too.

Today, Ms. Perry's oldest children are married and employed. The sister she supported works for the state, the brother as a barber. The child she took in is a bus driver. Her 14-year-old daughter attends school.

Ms. Perry talks with caseworkers from Catholic Charities every other day.

"It takes a village to raise children," she said. "I have a large family now. When I meet people, I look at them and I make them a part of my family."


HAVING BEEN HOMELESS, JIM BUDGETS CAREFULLY
Jim, 60, knows what it's like to be without a place to live. A drifter in his youth and a recovering alcoholic, he straightened up when his first son was born and worked as a warehouse manager in New England.

Jim, who asked that his last name be omitted, raised his two sons as a single parent in the 1980s. He made about $17,000 and received no public assistance. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment, followed by several two-bedroom houses.

"There are corners that can be cut," he said. "You do without sometimes so your child can have."

Jim returned to school in his 40s to be an alcohol and drug counselor and was promised a job at a community college. But when his son was killed by a drunk driver in 1999, he found it difficult to work with addicts.

Today, Jim suffers from medical conditions affecting his heart, back and endocrine system. He uses a cane and can't work for long periods, so he receives Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps and federal housing assistance.

Jim says he lives below the federal poverty level. He pays rent to Catholic Charities for a one-bedroom apartment in Oneonta. He often calls the agency with emotional crises.

He believes "every American's birthright is health care and the opportunity for education."

Does he think Catholic Charities' goal of reducing poverty is attainable? "Yes," he said; "but people have to be willing to break the circle of poverty. If a person takes the time to learn how to budget and learn how to shop, they can get along pretty well. I learn to live within those constraints."

(06/24/10) [[In-content Ad]]

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