No one chooses to be homeless.
On Friday, Oct. 17, Cabrini students gathered in the Wolfington Center to make over 100 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Afterwards, the students filed into vans to distribute these sandwiches, along with water bottles and granola bars, to different individuals who call the streets of Philadelphia home.
Each year about 12,000 people in Philadelphia seek housing in a shelter, with about 650 people homeless on an average day according to Project Home.
Thousands of people walk the streets of Philadelphia each day without even taking a look around, due to their busy schedules or problems of their own. The splintering park bench that is outside of the free public library? That is someone’s bed. That park that you walk past on your way to work on a frigid winter morning? That is the home to many; many who do not even have a coat to keep them warm on that cold day.
Feeling passionate about this issue, juniors Jessica Pepenella and Alyssa Garrison wanted to keep the tradition of PB&J night alive.
“I don’t think people take enough time out of their everyday life to think about the millions of other people around the world who have it so much worse,” Garrison said.
Students split up throughout the surrounding areas of Love Park and the Free Public Library handing out sandwiches to those in need. These individuals are people with hopes, dreams and stories of their own, just like any other human. “You would never realize how bad some people have it,” Garrison said. “It isn’t fair… what did they do to deserve a life like this?”
“After we got on the buses to head back to school, I went to get food, and I was thinking ‘we were just feeding people and I just walked across campus and got something to eat.’ We don’t realize that we take the little things for granted,” Pepenella said. “We went home, but they’re still out there.”
Many of the individuals that the students met chose to share their stories with them, which made the experience all the more special.
“One of the men said to me, ‘What you guys are doing is great. You don’t understand. You guys think that this is such a small event but to us, this is everything,’” Garrison said.
“I’m able to relate to others more,” freshman Sabrina Lee said. “I was talking to some people and instantly made a connection with them, even though I had just met them a few seconds ago.”
An event such as this one takes a lot of planning, from making the sandwiches to obtaining transportation, but for Pepenella, the warm feeling of community that she feels afterward is worth all of the preparation.
“I love it because the people are so gracious. We would hand them extra stuff and they would say ‘ no, no, I already have some.’ Just the kindness of them really means a lot. Everyone was so thankful, on both sides.”
Freshman Alexis Schwarz participated in the event for the first time. “This made me realize that everyone needs some sort of help, and those who can help, should.“
To Garrison, participating in and preparing for this event is something that she is thankful that she got to experience. “Taking three hours out of our Friday night makes these people’s lives for an entire week; that’s truly doing something extraordinary.”
@jnawoyski
