A Community for the Homeless – Amber Fogarty

“Every person should have the opportunity for redemption. Every human being should have the opportunity to be forgiven. If they’ve made mistakes in their past, that should not define the rest of their life.” — Amber Fogarty

In this episode of The Important Podcast, we’ll learn from Amber Fogarty, the Chief Goodness Officer at Mobile Loaves and Fishes, about how they serve the homeless in Austin Texas.

Listen on iTunes and Spotify.

Episode Backstory

On the surface, you might think that housing would solve homelessness. However, it’s not that simple. A village on the outskirts of Austin, Texas was founded with the belief that the community will solve homelessness. This ‘Community First Village’ currently houses 200 paying tenants who are no longer chronically homeless; they will house 1,000 formerly homeless tenants in the next 10 years, which would reduce the Austin homeless population by half.

The Mobile Loaves and Fishes community approach is working, but how is this possible? Hear the full story on iTunes and Spotify

Check out the show notes below 🙂

In This Episode, You Will Learn

• How Amber defines goodness
• What to do when you encounter homeless people on the street
• A common cause for homelessness: the catastrophic loss of family
• Housing alone will never solve homelessness, the community will
• What holds people back from sharing their talent
• How to encourage people to serve others
• The fundraising philosophy of heart over pocket
• Amber believes that human beings have two inherent needs/desires:
  • Desire to be fully known
  • Desire to be fully loved
• The importance of listening to your community
• The cons of scattered site housing
• How MLF dealt with opposition from the Not In My Backyard Movements (NIMBY)
• The role of fear in the bias against community housing
• The value that CommunityFirst Village provides to the neighborhood next door
• “Empower communities into a lifestyle of service” for the homeless
• The role that grace and mercy plays in conflict resolution at Mobile Loaves and Fishes
• The MLF.org ten year plan to mitigate homelessness in Austin

You can listen to this episode on iTunes and Spotify

Links and Resources

• Learn more at mlf.org
• Attend the Symposium for Goodness’ Sake
• Check out the book about the presence that we’re all born with: The Second Circle
• Donorbox – fundraise online for your nonprofit or cause

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Photos from Mobile Loaves and Fishes interview and visit.

About the Author

Jared Polivka’s mission is to serve others while living a light-hearted, present, empathetic and responsible life. Jared serves nonprofits working at Donorbox.org and he teaches storytelling and empathetic communication skills to technology organizations, universities and non-profits through The Joy of Improv. If you have a team offsite or need professional development training, reach out to the Joy of Improv.