Transcription of Mark Swann for the show Harvest #2
Dr. Lisa: Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour we feature a segment we call Give Back. Give Back is in recognition of the fact that wellness goes far beyond the individual into the family, the community and the world at large. Each week we also read a quote from our daily tread ‘Thoughts for an Inspired Life’, a book that was written to raise money for the organization Safe Passage. An organization founded by my late Bowdoin College classmate, Hanley Denning.
This week’s quote from our daily tread is from John Muir ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.’ Indeed this goes back to our ‘Harvest’ theme and the idea that we always reap what we sow.
` On today’s Give Back segment we are interviewing Mark Swann. Mark Swann has been the Executive Director at Preble Street in downtown Portland since 1991. Preble Street is a non-profit social service agency offering a wide variety of programs including a Resource Center, Teen Center, Florence House, soup kitchens, housing, employment, advocacy and social work services. Mark is a graduate of Bowdoin College and has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts. Welcome Mark.
Mark Swann:Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: I have sitting next to me, Genevieve Morgan, and what I love is the fact that we have a room full of Bowdoin graduates. Go you bears!
Mark Swann:The Bowdoin Mafia.
Dr. Lisa: Wait a minute! I don’t know about this mafia thing. We need to be a little bit more careful about that. I’m really interested in hearing what you’ve been doing for the last 20-something years. What years is this that you’re celebrating as the Executive Director?
Mark Swann:It’s 20 years. They just surprised me with a little party last week.
Dr. Lisa: Are you originally from Maine Mark?
Mark Swann:No, I’m from the Boston area.
Dr. Lisa: What made you get into this business?
Mark Swann:After I graduated from Bowdoin, I moved back to Boston. I was driving a truck. I was trying to figure out next steps, and I got involved through volunteering in a couple of different programmes including a shelter and a refugee resettlement programme. I went to work at the refugee resettlement programme for several years while I got my masters, but was still doing some volunteering at this homeless shelter.
Some Bowdoin friends of mine who had settled in Portland said there’s a job opening up here in Portland at this very cool little agency called Preble Street. They knew the mission, knew the work, knew some board members and said, “You should look into it.” It was perfect timing for me. I was 20 years old, I was looking for a move and a change, and 20 years later I’m still there.
Dr. Lisa: 20 years later we know there’s a lot of programs that have been put in place since then. I know that you have a few that you’re really interested in talking about. One of them is Lighthouse.
Mark Swann:Yeah, we’ve grown a lot and changed a lot. When I started in 1991 it was just me and Florence – a wonderful social worker and-
Dr. Lisa: Is Florence what the Florence House is named for?-
Mark Swann:Yes, we named Florence House after Florence, Florence Young who’s a social worker here in Portland. Had many roles at Preble Street as a staff person, a board member and a supervisor for students. It was just Florence and I in the chapel at the corner of Preble Street and Cumberland Ave. and we had a small soup kitchen. We had a great mission and wonderful vision and great board members. We have just taken on new responsibilities and tried some new programmes and picked up some programmes when other agencies have closed them.
We currently … It’s really hard for me to believe 20 years later, but we’ve got about 170 employees. We run several different facilities and programmes. We have all kinds of interesting partnerships with other organizations. We’ve come a long way.
Dr. Lisa: You have. You’ve come a long way. I was reading on your website that you serve 900 meals daily in eight soup kitchens across the city which is a total of 480,000 meals/year.
Mark Swann:Yeah, and that website’s a little bit outdated. We’re now very sadly breaking records every month and we’re now serving more like 1,100 meals/day in Portland just in our soup kitchens. That’s not our food pantries but just in the prepared meals. We are unfortunately very very busy.
Dr. Lisa: That leads into talking about the Maine Hunger Initiative. Is that related?
Mark Swann:Yeah. We started that a couple of years ago as a result of just increasing numbers and also our sense that there really wasn’t a state-wide voice in terms of advocacy and policy issues related to hunger. We raised the bar for ourselves a little bit and said let’s work on that as advocates and doing research and offering policy solutions to hunger because we’re the largest emergency food provider in Maine, but that’s not the solution. Pantries and soup kitchens are not the solutions. We need to do much more than that and much better than that.
That’s where public policy comes in whether that’s related to the economy, jobs, housing policy and also benefits like food stamps and school lunch programmes and school breakfasts. There’s a lot of very compelling anti-hunger programmes out there offered through the Federal Government, but Maine needs to do better at accessing those and making those available to people who are experiencing hunger.
Dr. Lisa: Early on in the show we had Julie Alfred Sullivan from the City of Portland’s Public Health division. She talked a little bit about the work that’s being done with adverse childhood events and the ending domestic violence in order that we can have healthier families and healthier people as time goes on. What sort of an impact do you see in your line of work with Preble Street as far as early childhood events impacting later on… later lives?
Mark Swann:Well we’re certainly seeing in the last couple of years with the recession the economic stress in families has added just another component and level of tragedy for families. We’re seeing many many more parents with small children coming in for services. We’re seeing a lot more teens coming in to our Teen Center or the Lighthouse Shelter. Part of it is because of the result of family issues, family violence, neglect issues, and just the economic stressors that have trickled down to kids in their lives.
The work we’re doing at the Teen Center including with public health, the City of Portland Public Health Department is a big partner with us. We’re really trying to embrace and surround young people when they do end up on the streets. Everybody talks about runaways. An awful lot of these kids were serving … They’re not runaways, they’re kind of throwaways. They’re coming from really dysfunctional families with abuse and violence. As hard as it is to say this, sometimes leaving the home was maybe one of their smartest decisions to get out of that environment.
They’re coming in, they’re on the street, they’re coming into the Teen Center or staying at the Lighthouse Shelter. We need to treat those kids as if they’re in crisis because they are. It’s an emergency. We’re not just feeding people. We don’t want to maintain their lives on the streets. We have a school program at the Teen Center run by the school department. We have the health clinic, Day One is there doing substance abuse and mental health counseling. We provide meals and drop-in services.
The whole effort is really to again embrace that young person with opportunity, with caring adults, with consistent advice and adults and professional social work. It’s a big effort on our part working with the young people.
Dr. Lisa: I read on your website that you have more than 5,000 volunteers. I’m hoping that that’s also old information; that you have a lot more volunteers now. I know that there are a lot of people in the community who want to be able to help in some way. What do you usually suggest for people who are interested in giving back to their own community?
Mark Swann:The volunteer piece is a critical part of getting our work done. The majority of the volunteer jobs are in the soup kitchen or the food pantry. It’s helping prepare meals, serve meals, clean up after meals. We’re doing three meals/day at the resource center, two meals/day at the Teen Center although we want to expand that to three. Three meals/day at Florence House. We have a food pantry so in terms of scheduling for potential volunteers there’s all kinds of opportunities.
It’s 365 days/year we have groups come in, we have corporations, we have churches and temples who come in at a regular basis. Because the sheer volume in number of meals in these different facilities means we’re always looking for volunteers. We really are. There’s a seasonality to that. This is the time of year people are paying a little more attention I think to these issues than in the summer in their school groups, in rotary clubs and that kind of thing, contacting us. We’re very much looking for volunteers right now. The best way to do that is to go on our website, preblestreet.org and get in touch with the Volunteer Manager.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll also link that through the doctorlisa.org website so if people who are interested in being in touch that should be easy to do. Do you have-
Mark Swann:The other piece for the community as well is food drives. We are absolutely very concerned about coming winter and our ability to really meet the demand. As I said in May we had the busiest month ever in 35 years of Preble Street. Then we surpassed that in June, we surpassed that in July and we surpassed that in … Numbers are going up and it’s harder and harder for us to find sources for food where … We work very closely with Hannaford and Shaws and Whole Foods. All those places are very generous but we still are dependent on churches to do food drives, school groups, companies, you name it. We need the help.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve named the theme of this show ‘Harvest’, and harvest is very important for you as well. It’s not just about harvesting for people who have plenty, it’s harvesting so that you might be able to give it back to others who don’t have quite as much. At least not right now. Maybe if you can give it back to them and get them started you can change their lives in some way.
Mark Swann:Yeah, I think to me the word ‘harvest’ also has a connotation of community and people working together. That’s what we’re all about at Preble Street as well. I think the motivation for me, well, just this morning a client who I’ve known for a long time and he’s not homeless, he’s not in the shelter. He’s poor, he moves in and out of different apartments. He comes to us for support and some services and occasionally food. He came up to me this morning with a huge smile on his face to show me his new teeth. He’s been working for a long time to be able to afford a whole new set of dentures. He was so happy. He had such a great smile, and those are … There are little things like that that keep us going.
We also have recently have had a couple, what I call alumni of the Lighthouse Shelter, who’ve gotten in touch with us and wanted … have heard about our trying to move and have got in touch to us to tell their story and how much Lighthouse meant to them. We have an emergency room doctor in Baltimore who’s telling his story about the Lighthouse Shelter through a screenplay. I had an unsolicited phone call from a young man just about two weeks ago just calling to say, “I’m just checking in, just wanted to say hi. I heard about Lighthouse. You guys were great to me a few years ago. I have a house, I have two kids, I got a job.”
We get wonderful feedback and gratitude. That’s not why we do the work, but it does help. It does keep you motivated. I’ve been involved in this work for a long time because I inherently believed that we’re all equal and the value of one person is equal to the value of another person. I think people living in poverty are often dismissed, dehumanized, forgotten, stereotyped. I actually think those biases in that environment right now is getting harsher for people who are poor.
I think my intention and that of the agency I work for is to break down some of those barriers, provide some education, be advocates, allow for people to have a voice, to counter some of that dialogue that’s out there right now that I think is pretty unhealthy and at times mean-spirited. It’s not good for a community. It’s the opposite for harvesting. It’s dismissing. That’s what we’re trying to work towards.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have any events upcoming in the next year or so that might be good fundraising opportunities for people to contribute?
Mark Swann:The major initiative we’re working on right now is to relocate the Lighthouse Shelter. We’ve been running that shelter … It’s the only shelter for teenagers in southern Maine, and we’ve been running it since 2004. It is in a building that is falling apart. We rent it, it’s in rough shape, but more importantly it is full every night. We’re literally turning people away two out of three nights. Their options are to go to a very crowded adult shelter or sell their body for a place to sleep for a night – neither very healthy good choices.
We really need to move the Lighthouse Shelter and expand it and have better space and be able to provide more services there. We are up to our eyeballs right now in finding a building and securing the funds. It’s going to be all private fundraising. We’re out there knocking on doors and asking for help. We need to raise $3.5 million, so it’s a big effort on our part.
Dr. Lisa: People can go to your website and they can find out more information about the fundraising initiatives and what’s going on with the Lighthouse Shelter then?
Mark Swann:Absolutely yeah. We’re happy to talk to people or meet with people or give tours or any of that.
Dr. Lisa: Great. Well Mark thank you so much for coming in today. You’re going great work. Congratulations on 20 years! Keep it up, and we’ll see how things are going with the Lighthouse Shelter and your initiatives in the future.
Mark Swann:Great. Thanks very much for having me.