Community Meals & Communication Research
During its four-year run on NPR, This I Believe engaged listeners in a discussion of the core beliefs that guide their daily lives.
Here, I share my believe that community conversations can change the world.
Executive Summary
Care for Friends started as a question a group of Chicagoans asked about how to help the city's most vulnerable, and the answer they landed on had nothing to do with paperwork. The first barrier people run into isn't a lack of programs — it's that walking into most of them requires identification, which is genuinely frightening if you have a spotty record, unclear immigration status, or the kind of paranoia that surfaces after a few weeks without stable housing. So instead, we built a community meal that asks for nothing but a seat at the table.
The results surprised even the partner organizations. Roughly half of the permanent housing placements our affordable-housing partner made started as a conversation over lunch, not an intake form. One guest I think about often has been sober for over ten years now, has a full-time job with benefits, and lives next door to a neighbor who used to describe him as having a "prickly personality."
What I keep learning from this work, in a boardroom or in Lincoln Park, is the same thing: trust is the actual infrastructure. Housing, employment, and health outcomes follow once you've built a relationship people believe in — they don't come first.