Walk for Homeless raises $35 K

When Keith Wasserman started Good Works' Timothy House emergency shelter in 1980, he wanted to build hope for people struggling with poverty in southeast Ohio. Thirty years later, Good Works Inc. continues to raise awareness about the issues of poverty and homelessness in rural Appalachia.

Good Works held its eighth annual Walk for the Homeless on a wet Saturday, with 521 participants raising more than $35,000 to support the region's only homeless shelter.

Participants Saturday chose from six different walks, from the longest 3.7-mile walk to a mini-walk down College Street. Themes were "families in poverty," "tent city," "walk of the cross" and "food insecurity," along with a homeless simulation and the mini-walk that included a viewing of ABC's "A Hidden America - Children of the Mountains."

Last year, Timothy House helped 164 people but had to turn away another 36 individuals who called seeking short-term shelter, said Andrea Horsch, director of care-giving at Timothy House. In its busiest year in 2008, Good Works provided 4,407 nights of shelter and turned away 80 different people, Horsch said.

"We will go over capacity on a case-by-case basis," she said. "The weather is not the biggest issue that we deal with. Most people who come to Timothy House are not coming from situations where they were sleeping outside, although some people are."

Rather, Horsch said, emergency calls are more common when people's social resources are exhausted as well as their financial resources.

"I feel like a lot of people come to us after their relationships are exhausted as much as their money," she said. "You can burn through relationships just like you can burn through any other resource."

Wasserman said Appalachian Ohio is one of the poorest regions in the U.S. According to the Good Works Web site, nearly one-fifth of families in Appalachian Ohio lived in poverty in 2005, earning $15,000 or less per year for a family of three.

Theresa Thomas traveled from Grove City with her 10-year-old daughter, Rachel. This is the seventh year the two have participated in the event.

"You can't teach empathy, but when (Rachel) was 6 years old, it hit her in such a way that she was changed," Theresa Thomas said. "(Homelessness) could happen to anybody... This is a person; this is not just a cause."

Wasserman said he spends several days every few years living among homeless people in various cities across the U.S. From those experiences, Wasserman has developed Good Works to provide a variety of services to people living in poverty in the area.

"I lived on Elliot Street (in Athens), and during my senior year (at Ohio University), I was a fifth-year senior. I began to take homeless people into my home," Wasserman said. "This was about four years before I had heard the word 'homeless.' I became a Christian in high school, and my world view changed, and particularly my view of people changed."

He said he began having a desire to make a difference in people's lives.

As for Saturday's fundraiser, Wasserman said he hopes people were moved by their experiences.

"My sense is that people had meaningful experiences that awakened in them a sense of responsibility and hope," he said. "That's kind of our goal. We don't want to just have a fundraiser; we want to have an experience people can enjoy as a family."