Cornerstone Community Outreach

Cornerstone Community Outreach has served Chicago’s homeless population for over 20 years. This short documentary reflects the work of CCO through the experiences of shelter staff and residents.

length:11 min

(video made by www.manifestmedia.de)

Dear Friends,
Hello! The holiday season has come and gone, and it’s hard to believe that we are already in February of a brand new year.
I thought you might be interested in some CCO highlights from the past few months. Life is always exciting at the shelter, and the holidays have been no exception. Your interest and concern on behalf of our shelter residents is such a blessing to all of us. I hope you find this letter informative and helpful. So much of what we do would not be possible without you.

November Highlights

November 2009 included a visit from Moo Moo of the Harlem Globetrotters, who graciously posed for pictures and signed autographs for our residents. A local TV station came looking to interview some of our people on the issue of hunger and how it had affected them before they became homeless. A major ad agency downtown in Chicago shared their Thanksgiving party food with us. On Thanksgiving Day several churches and volunteers made sure that all our residents enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving meal. The holiday season had begun.

December Highlights

In December we helped celebrate the 20th anniversary of Heartland Health Outreach, who have contributed so much toward the health and well-being of our residents. They focus on residents who might be hesitant to seek out medical services for an array of reasons, so Heartland Health Outreach provides healthcare services at Cornerstone each week.
The holiday celebrations continued, with decorated trees arriving for our families from a large corporation. Another group brought Christmas meals and backpacks, and still another brought socks, hats, and gloves. An area church held a Christmas party for the children, with food, arts, and crafts, while another church held a special dinner for the 65 single men. Everyone enjoyed what is turning out to be a yearly holiday concert featuring a wide variety of Christmas music. The kids experienced the arrival of three different Santas. Our single ladies enjoyed a wonderful Christmas party complete with a talent show and prizes, gifts and more good food. Our single men received gifts and Christmas stockings filled with goodies. We handed out gifts to the families, with each child receiving at least six toys, and passed out candy and chocolate to adults who enjoyed feeling like little kids at Christmas.
Throughout the season, we were entertained by Sean’s loud laughter, found out that Walter likes oranges, listened to
Danita’s poetry, and heard from Alan that he found a place to live in the suburbs. At the closing of the year it was great to see good things happening every day.

January Highlights

Our families started 2010 with the traditional New Year’s meal of ham, black-eyed peas (the eyes of God upon you),
and cornbread. Truly, we feel the loving eyes of God upon us all.
January brought harsh weather in which the call was put forth to bring in those who had been sleeping outside on the frozen pavement. The dining room became a temporary warming center and pillows were passed out to grateful recipients. We began talking with our new arrivals to see how we could best help them.
Also in January we celebrated the one-year anniversary of managing our 65-bed men’s shelter program. What a privilege that has been! More volunteers came to work for us on Martin Luther King Day, sorting and hauling clothing in our Free Store. Then we got ready to host another four-week job-preparedness training on-site for so many of our people who are trying to find employment. A late Christmas present to all of us involved Sean getting his own apartment. Watching him go up the walk to his own front door and put the key in the lock has already been a highlight of our year.
Another blessing in our life is past President Emeritus of the Evangelical Covenant Church, Glenn Palmberg, and his friends, who have been working closely with us on major projects such as completing our much-needed elevator. Great excitement there, but more details later.
Finally, this year we ask you to join us as we celebrate 20 years of Cornerstone Community Outreach providing shelter to thousands of homeless people. What an amazing privilege and responsibility it has been for us, with all of you at our side. We could not do this without your support and encouragement. We will keep you posted on our progress as we continue to find jobs and housing for so many people. Please feel free to come and visit us whenever you can.

Sincerely,
Sandra J. Ramsey
Executive Director
Cornerstone Community Outreach
check out our website: www.ccolife.org • or facebook: www.facebook.com/cornerstonecommunityoutreach

Recently, our site has been the target of an initiating, and embarrassing hack.  Links to purchase pharmacy items have appeared on the front page of our site.

We are working to discover how this is happening and how to stop and prevent it.

So, please kindly ignore the dust?

Thanks,

CCO Staff

Several staff members have visited residents at Stoger Hospital (formerly Cook County) today. Many homeless people on the streets and in shelters have health related challenges. Often the stress and exhaustion of being without a place to stay makes the homeless more vulnerable to health problems. CCO makes every effort to ensure that the care and attention continues outside the shelter walls.

Follow this link to become a fan of CCO on Facebook. Becoming a fan will enable you to receive updates about Cornerstone.

http://www.facebook.com/cornerstonecommunityoutreach

We are grateful to our many donors who made this holiday season a joy for CCO residents and staff members. The children who live at Cornerstone had three visits with santa and many festive meals and treats were available. It was fabulous watching everyone receive their gifts. Many residents expressed their surprise and appreciation for all that they were given.
Thank you to all our donors who contributed to Christmas 2009!

Recently there have been local news stories that talk about shelters having to close its doors in Chicago. Though this may be, some of the articles misstated the facts about this issue, and it is not CCO that is losing beds or having to shut down. CCO will provide the same amount of beds in 2010 as we have this year. Thank you all for your continuing support of the people served at CCO. -Andrew Winter

Thanksgiving and Christmas is such a confusing season. It is supposed to be the season of joy, celebration and happiness, yet many are struggling to see even a glimmer of hope. To those who are homeless, precariously housed, isolated in a SRO or institutionalized, this time of the year is often a season riddled with guilt, regret and grief.
• Guilt over not being able to provide meals or gifts for their families. Guilt over having to rely on organizations and churches. Guilt over the mystery of estranged children and the whereabouts of family members.
• Regret over relationships that have been destroyed and need to be repaired. Regret over the decisions that were once made and now having to suffer the consequences. Regret over not having a home to call their own.
• Grief over what could have been, but isn’t. Grieving over their reality of alienation and rejection. Grieving the lost of those loving family members that once invited them in. Grief over the reality of isolation.

At Cornerstone, we do our best to counterattack these feelings of depression. We offer what we can, with as much energy as we can, and with as much love as we can. This takes form in the beauty of fabulous meals, busses coming to take people to church services and feasts, entertaining shows and a mass of donated gifts and hygiene items. It is our hope and prayer that through our love and these different acts of kindness, our homeless women, men and children will taste the fruits of thanksgiving, celebration and joy.

I am pleased to report many clients have wept with joy, proclaiming that their Christmas and Thanksgiving at CCO was “their best ever.” Apart from the abundance of food and gifts, they are also blessed with the wonderful fellowship and community of people living in and experiencing the same struggle. They are surprised by the mysterious blessings; that they are able to celebrate in their turmoil.

This holiday period, I want to encourage us all to courageously to take a leap of faith. Let us embrace and truly love some lonely, alienated and rejected people. How about inviting a homeless person or displaced immigrant into our homes for the Thanksgiving meal? How about sending a Christmas card to someone in prison? How about volunteering and serving food in a homeless shelter? How about visiting someone living in a hospital, nursing home, treatment center or a SRO? How about giving some gifts to a mother who cannot afford to buy her children anything?

I want to encourage us all; let us creatively use our imaginations and be in prayer as to how we can bless the alienated, the isolated and the homeless this festive season.

Thanks to the Loyola School of Nurses who conducted a Health Fair for the Residents of the Naomi Interim Program for Women and the Epworth Day Time Drop In Center for Men.  They took blood pressure, passed out info and answered questions.  We really appreciate you!

Cornerstone Community Outreach is grateful to the Women’s Ministries of the Evangelical Covenant Church Central Conference for their Dressers for Dignity project. The 16 dressers donated will be used by mothers with children who reside at our shelter. The dressers are in excellent condition and will be a blessing to our residents for years to come!