One Friday night a month, Campus ministry takes Mother Cabrini’s mission of caring for the poor literally, through helping the homeless.
While being interviewed for his position at Cabrini, Rev. Carl F. Janicki, director of Campus Ministry, proposed the idea of PB&J Nights at Cabrini. “I said how I thought it could work here. I explained the simplicity of it and yet the profoundness of it and it’s something we’ve been doing ever since,” Janicki said.
The PB&J Nights welcome the participation of all aspects of the Cabrini community and strive towards spreading charity on and off the campus. The Campus Ministry services have grown much since Janicki’s arrival in 2010 – the program now provides service trips not just to the Philadelphia area, but Ecuador, New Orleans, and Appalachia. “They [the service trips] afford us the opportunity to be of service to a community that is away,” Janicki said.
According to Janicki, with life being so tough on the streets it is hard to gage the ages of the different people that volunteers meet on trips, or even the type of homelessness they suffer from—it takes an actual conversation to know their story. “Most people walk right past the homeless, they ignore them. They are unaware someone is sleeping on the grate that they are walking by,” Janicki said, in regards to the average person on the street.
Janicki explained how he’s seen student’s preconceived notions about homelessness being change through the participation in this program. Through their interaction with the homeless on the street, Janicki says it helps college students “rethink homelessness.”
The volunteering opportunity does not just feed the less fortunate, but also holds clothing and blanket drives during the cold months.
This program helps facilitate two needs for all the constituents involved, charity and systemic. “There is an immediate need—people need to eat. That is the charity piece. The systemic, that’s the justice piece. We need to get people to thinking about how they can change homelessness and how to view it in a new way,” Janicki said.
With social justice being a staple in the fabric of Cabrini, and the program being his own brainchild, Janicki is proud to see how far it all has come. “People have really adopted it and ran with it. Our outreach to the homeless has grown,” Janicki said.
Presently being fronted by both Janicki himself and student leaders he urges others to volunteer and join in their cause. “All we are trying to do is create an awareness of the people who live in the shadows,” Janicki said. “The homeless have a way of blending in.”
