“I knew that if we were successful in raising the funds, for the Miracle Money program, that our un-housed friends would use the money wisely and use it for needs from housing, food, security, transportation”-Kevin

In this episode, our featured voices are the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, Kevin Adler, Miracle Messages Friend Program volunteer Jen Roy along with Miracle Money Program participant Ray.

The pandemic has exposed how fragile the economic health is of most American households especially our black and brown households. City of Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs was the first government leader to believe in his community members and created a privately funded universal basic income pilot called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration. The data from the 2019 pilot showed that providing residents $500 per month that they spent on food, rent, utilities and car repairs for example helped stabilize their households. For more background on Mayor Tubbs and the pilot please listen to Episode 12 from our documentary series "Stockton’s Rise From Bankruptcy".

Mayor Tubbs has gone on to create the "Mayors for Guaranteed Income" program with Mayors from California to Georgia signing on to the program. Since Tubb’s Stockton experiment, Oakland, Marin County, San Francisco, and Santa Clara County started one to two-year universal basic income programs. The pilot programs provide participants between $500 to $1,000 guaranteed dollars every month with no strings attached. Most of these initial pilots like Tubbs’s Stockton pilot are being funded by private donations. On July 15th California lawmakers approved the nation's first state-funded guaranteed income program that once Governor Newsom signs the bill cities and counties can apply for funding to support a current pilot or a new program from the $35 million dollar fund.

Jennifer Roy

Jennifer “Jen” Roy grew up in Marin County in the SF Bay Area and graduated from San Domenico School in San Anselmo in 1989. She then went on to get her Bachelor's degree from University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA in History and then went back to work at San Domenico for three years until moving into college student life, getting her Master's in Student Affairs in Higher Education from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO in 1999 and then working at California State University, Chico for six years. In 2005, Jen decided to do a volunteer year with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) in Boston where she worked as a parish minister at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Roxbury and then stayed in Boston for the next eight years, continuing to work in parish ministry at St. Mary's for three more years as well as in Campus Ministry at Simmons College for three years and then at Emmanuel College for three years. Jen also became a trained spiritual director and completed a Post-Master's Certificate in Spiritual Formation at Boston College. Jen has served as a Campus Minister at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco for the last seven years and will move on to begin her second year in a Counseling Psychology Master’s program at Dominican University of California to pursue her dream to become a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT. Jen’s passion has been to accompany those who have been unhoused and in the margins volunteering over the last 15 years in both Boston and in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco with Boston Health Care for the Homeless and the Ignatian Spirituality Project (ISP) both in Boston and Care Through Touch, St. Anthony Foundation, Faithful Fools, and Miracle Messages all in San Francisco.

Ray

My name is Ray. I am a San Francisco Bay Area native that enjoys meeting new people and spending time with my daughter. With the help of Miracle Messages, I have recently transitioned into permanent housing and now reside in the Midwest. Along with a new hometown are new goals. The most important of which is to give back the blessings that I’ve received by helping those in need or who are feeling alone.

Kevin Adler

Kevin Adler is the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages. Previously, Kevin co-founded three education technology startups, and authored a book on how shared traumas can bring us together. Kevin is a graduate of Cambridge University and Occidental College, where he was the 2018 Young Alumnus of the Year and where Barack Obama's favorite professor said, "in 40 years of teaching, Kevin is the single best student I’ve ever had." To find out more about the origins of Miracle Message and Kevin’s story please visit: https://www.miraclemessages.org/backstory

Miracle Messages

We offer a humane way to help end homelessness: reconnect families, strengthen local social support systems, shatter stigmas, and empower people everywhere to get involved. Our work has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, NowThis, on a billboard in Times Square, in a TED talk, and hundreds more. Founder and CEO Kevin F. Adler started Miracle Messages in honor of his uncle, who lived on-and-off the streets for 30 years. We are on a mission to end relational poverty on the streets, and in the process, inspire people everywhere to embrace their homeless neighbors not as problems to be solved, but as people to be loved.

Direct cash transfers: Miracle Money is a direct cash transfer program for people experiencing homelessness in the US. Beginning in February 2021, an initial pilot of 15 un-housed participants in Miracle Friends are receiving $500/month for six months.

Reunion Service: Our approach is simple, effective, and built to scale: a person isolated by homelessness records a short message to a loved one, often with the help of a local referral partner, volunteer, or formerly homeless ambassador. Then, our network of "digital detectives" attempt to locate the loved one, deliver the message, and facilitate a reunion. To date, we have reunited 325 families, with an average time separated of 15 years. 80% of delivered messages have been positively received, and dozens of reunions have resulted in getting a client off-the-streets. 

Buddy System: A reunion service is appropriate for about 10-20% of the homeless population. But what if someone doesn’t have loved ones, or the family is part of the problem, or similarly under-resourced? Enter Miracle Friends, a first-of-its-kind virtual buddy system that matches 1:1 individuals experiencing homelessness with volunteers for daily 5-10 minute phone calls and texts, for general companionship and support. Currently, Miracle Friends is being piloted in the San Francisco Bay Area to support homeless individuals being moved into hotels during COVID-19. https://www.miraclemessages.org/covid19

AT&T and Verizon are donating phones and accounts to Miracle Friends, a new program aimed at offering emotional support to San Francisco’s homeless population during the pandemic. Organized by the nonprofit Miracle Messages, Miracle Friends matches volunteers with homeless individuals sheltering in San Francisco hotels to chat on the phone several times a week.

Donation/Volunteer

Miracle Messages is a nonprofit organization that reconnects people experiencing homelessness with their loved ones, and with us as their neighbors. Everyone is someone's somebody. Join us, learn more, or donate today nation: miraclemessages.org/donate

Donate funds directly to our un-housed community members through the Pilot Program Miracle Money which provides a direct cash transfer program for people experiencing homelessness

Volunteer to help our neighbors experiencing homelessness to reconnect with their families

Videos

Find out more about Miracle Messages and their Miracle Money Program through these videos

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