Episode 1: Miracle Messages

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Miracle Messages volunteers and staff conducting outreach and reuniting families

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“These are people often who are experiencing homelessness, who use the ICU as a waiting room”

In this episode we feature the voice of Kevin Adler, the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages. Kevin started Miracle Messages in honor of his uncle Mark, who lived on-and-off the streets for 30 years. Miracle Messages helps reunite families through helping community members who are un-housed to record short video messages to a family member. Volunteers, referring nonprofit and government partners or formerly homeless ambassadors help record the message. Then a network of volunteer digital detectives attempt to locate the un-housed person’s family to deliver the message. The digital detectives also work with the family and the un-housed person to facilitate a reunion. As of the updated recording of this episode Miracle Messages has facilitated over 450 family re-unifications. 

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.

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.

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.

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

To find out more about Miracle Message reconnecting families please check out the videos of Brut and Perry Joseph:

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