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had food in my backpack from the
restaurant. They were in worse shape than
me so I’d end up giving them my food.
Then I started taking every scrap of food
I could get from the restaurant every night
I’d end up with an entire backpack or crate
on the back of my bike, and I started
handing it out
From there a couple guys got pretty
familiar with me. One night one of them was
like, “Hey man, I love food, but I could really
use a jacket, can you help me out?” So I
went to Goodwill and got a jacket for him.
Then a couple other people started asking
me for things.
The people at Goodwill noticed I (kept)
coming in and one of the managers actually
asked me what I was doing. When she went
to ring me up, she rang up a number (price)
that was much less than what it should have
been. She was like, “I appreciate what
you’re doing. It’s not much, but I hope it can
help out” That was the beginning of the
relationship I developed with Goodwill.
Since then, it went from dropping off a
couple to-go boxes of food and a case full of
stocking caps to a weekly event where for
three or four hours we give away dozens of
jackets and shoes and hats and clothes. We
bring music, we bring down games,
chessboards, Jenga, all kinds of stuff. And
we create a hangout.
The whole concept behind the block party
is feed the belly, feed the soul. We treat
them as friends, which I really, truly feel like
they are all friends of mine.
S.H.: What days do you have the block
parties?
ROBERT VOETS/CBS ENTERTAINMENT ©2016 CBS BROADCASTING, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Survival instincts
After drawing the spotlight on the TV show
“Survivor,” Ken McNickle returned home to help
break barriers between the housed and the homeless
BY SARAH HARVEY
When I moved back to the mainland after
almost six years there, I was really amazed
at how many people seemed to have no
popular character on the TV show
support I realized that we don’t have that
“Survivor: Millennials vs. Gen X,"
family connection, we don’t have that desire
Ken McNickle is also the founder of
to open ourselves to strangers, and it’s a
Humane Kind Project in Denver. For the
cultural thing. It’s a cultural shift that’s been
past six months the nonprofit has been
getting worse and worse.
breaking down barriers between homeless
I realized that (people on the streets)
and non-homeless residents. He told Street
more than anything needed support, to be
Roots’ sister paper Denver Voice his hopes
seen, to be acknowledged - a human being
for this Christmas and beyond. “Make
worthy of conversation, friendship, love,
compassion a habit,” he said, “not a holiday.” connection, all of that
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
A
Sarah Harvey: What inspired you to
create the Humane Kind Project?
experiencing homelessness before?
Ken McNickle: When I lived in Hawaii,
one of the most beautiful things about the
culture was that everyone treats everyone
like family. They refer, literally, in speech to
everyone as auntie, uncle or cousin,
whether you’re actually blood related or not
There’s this constant feeling of belonging
and family and support.
K.M.: No. I’ve spent a good deal of my
adolescence and adult years working with
nonprofits of various sorts, but never
specifically with the homeless. I was actually
working at a restaurant in Denver and riding
along the Cherry Creek bike path almost
every night and was constantly seeing the
homeless underneath the bridges. I usually
S.H.: Had you worked with people
K.M.: It’s every Saturday morning. The
energy and atmosphere is a little bit lighter,
you get some guys at the beginning of the
day who are a little optimistic and, what’s
better than a couple of really good LaMar’s
donuts and a cup of Starbucks coffee to start
your day?
One of the things beneficial about that is
some of the groups come out and do these
big, grand events once or twice a year. It’s
great - but the whole premise of what we’re
doing is connecting the community through
compassion, breaking down those social
barriers.
So by showing up every single week,
every Saturday morning, we feel like it’s
been really impactful. The level of trust and
the level of connection and type of
friendship we’ve been able to develop have
been really profound because they don’t see
us once every six months, they see us every
week.
S.H.: If someone wants to volunteer, should
they just show up?
K.M.: Absolutely. Just show up, every
Saturday morning you know where to find
us. Rain or shine, doesn’t matter, we’re
there every time. If you want to come
connect with us, I also make it very clear
.that it’s not about you and your friends
coming down to take a couple selfies. I’ve
had fans come down and want to talk and
engage with me, and I tell them it’s not the
time. The purpose of being down here as
volunteers is not to hang out with one
another and just be present, it’s to engage
and connect. It’s about connecting with
these people and really offering (your) ears
and hearts and time.
S.H.: So that engagement and connection,
Street Roots • Dec. 16-22, 2016
is that mostly happening in the form of
conversations?
K.M.: Yeah, definitely. You feed
someone’s soul and that lingers much, much
longer than a sandwich. If you can do both,
if you can feed the belly with a sandwich and
feed the soul by truly listening to someone
and being present with them and making
them feel as though their feelings or
thoughts are validated and that they are
seen as a human being, that carries with
them, that sticks.
S.H.: How do both the volunteers and the
people you serve react afterward?
K.M;: One of my friends came down when
we were first doing this. He grew up in a
very conservative family, he came from
wealthy schools, wealthy family, wealthy
neighborhood - not really familiar with the
homeless, so all he had was a number of
assumptions and judgements.
Finally he comes down and afterwards I
go up to him just to kind of get an idea of
how he was feeling, what was going on, and
he was in tears. He’s choked up. I’m asking
him how he’s doing and he’s like, “I will
never see a homeless person the same
again.”
He said, “I’ve done soup kitchens before,
I’ve gone with my church and given food to
the homeless, but this method, this way, it’s
not me behind a table putting a spoon full of
soup in someone’s bowl and they move on,
you don’t have a second or two seconds of
interaction and they’re gone. I sat and talked
to someone for half an hour and they poured
their heart out to me.”
S.H.: Does Humane Kind have any special
projects or events coming up?
K.M.: We’ve got an event coming up in
February, which is our Valentine’s Day
event It’s our carnation day. Last year we
had 500 single-stem carnations with our
cards attached to them and the men actually
went out with those on Valentine’s Day and
handed out the flowers for us all throughout
downtown Denver. This year we’re hoping to
get 2,500-5,000 flowers to really amp it up.
One of the most beautiful interactions I
saw was a gentleman who walked up to a
woman to give her a flower, and her first
assumption was, OK, here comes a
homeless man, he’s got a handful of flowers,
it’s Valentine’s Day, he’s probably trying to
sell me something.
Then he explains what the organization is
and why we’re doing what we’re doing. And
then the boundaries between them, you
could just see them slowly break down and
disappear and ten minutes later she’s talking
to him. A single flower was the catalyst.
S.H.: So that breaking down of barriers
goes both ways?
K.M.: Exactly. Just like breaking down
barriers between my volunteers and the
homeless people we’re working with, we’re
breaking down barriers on both sides. We’re
all humans, we all deserve respect, we all
deserve love, and we all deserve to be seen.
Courtesy of Denver Voice / INSP.ngo