Emmaüs

Sometimes I feel the need to feel thankful in my life. When this is the case, I list in my head the things I'm not - obese, handicapped and homeless. Growing up in Seoul and Tokyo, I would often pass homeless people on the streets. I particularly remember a legless man that pushed himself around using a board in Namdaemun. Whenever I saw someone homeless I would feel hopeless and sorry. I didn't even bother giving change, because I didn't believe it would help them. Even before I knew about mental illnesses I knew what they were. I could see them on the homeless people.

I've always thought that homeless = hopeless and that once they were on the streets, they would die there. The best we others could do was leave them alone. Now, I realize I was wrong. There is a way to help people who seem helpless. As the founder of Emmaüs UK says: "I was challenged by a very lucid, but angry homeless man who shot down every fundraising idea I had… Eventually I became so irritated I asked him what on earth he did want. And his answer was… I want somewhere I can work, where I feel I belong, and where I can recover my self-respect." Not many people seem to grasp that giving homeless people a job helps them more than one hundred night shelters. Our world is fixed up so that your job is a big part of your identity. That is why many unemployed people soon fall into depression, because loss of a job practically means loss of purpose.

Obviously it is not so simple. Many homeless people suffer from multiple mental illnesses, and are in many ways unable to find a job on their own. This is where Emmaüs enters. The charity organization was founded in 1971 by a French priest. Although driven by compassion, Emmaüs aimed to be practical and self-sufficient. The basic concept is this: Activate homeless people by creating simple jobs for them. When it was first established, Emmaüs collected and recycled and provided twenty homeless people with a purpose in life. Emmaüs UK was founded nineteen years later, and today the organization exists in 37 countries with 300 groups in total. The biggest, Emmaüs UK, actually gives eleven times more money back to the community than it receives. The returns are economic, social and environmental.

I think Emmaüs is on the right track of tackling homelessness. It's an idea that works, and I believe that many more people should support and know about it.