America loves talking about values: hard work, courage, patience, honesty, strength … the list goes on. But there’s one you don’t often hear from politicians or see plastered on third grade classroom walls — humility.
That’s exactly the virtue Julio Anta, 20, wanted to bring into the limelight when he started Humility Now, a two-year-old organization to serve Miami‘s homeless population.
“Ghandi said it best,” Anta said. “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking about yourself less.”
That’s Anta’s mission whenever he brings a group of volunteers together. It’s not just about feeding the hungry, he says. It’s about changing how we see each other.
“We want our volunteers to recognize the humanity in the homeless,” he said. “We want them to build relationships with people.”
It’s not just Humility Now’s focus that’s different — their events are unique too. They hold movie nights with popcorn and soda for the homeless on summer evenings. They hold “jubilee” days, based on the Biblical idea of redistributing wealth, where homeless people get to “shop” for new clothes and shoes. And whey they do have a traditional soup kitchen-style meal, like their annual Thanksgiving feast, programs director David Merida tells volunteers not to stay behind the buffet line.
“As soon as you give them that plate of food, I tell them, you walk with them,” said Merida. “Hang out with them and talk with them. Grab a plate yourself and eat with them.”
Merida and Anta met at a church event and soon realized they both had a passion for serving the homeless. Before starting Humility Now, the two of them spent a weekend living on the streets. Merida says that experience changed him and made him see his life differently.
“The whole time, I knew that I was going to go back to my house with a roof over my head, with air conditioning, with food — that this wasn’t permanent,” he said. “But I remember getting home not even being able to lay down in my own bed. I was grateful to be alive.”
The two young men set out to create a new kind of nonprofit, one just as focused on changing the hearts of its volunteers as it is on solving social problems. To get the word out, they sell T-shirts designed to get people thinking about the values they espouse. For each T-shirt sold online, they give one to a homeless person in Miami. The shirts, with slogans like “Love Your Neighbor,” and “Be the Change,” not only provide clothing to a person living on the street, but are also meant to challenge passersby.
“Maybe you see someone asking for change, you might read what their shirt says, and instead of putting your money back in your pocket, you’ll feel something stirring inside of you,” said Anta.
Volunteer Grecy Alonso has been serving the homeless with Humility Now since 2009, bringing both her children and grandchildren to volunteer alongside her. She says the focus on relationships has changed the way she thinks about homelessness.
“It is a humbling experience when you are out there and when you get to know them as people,” she said. “You realize that it could be you. It could be your mom. It could be your brother.”
And not everything Alonso has learned from her homeless friends has been depressing. She’s been inspired, she said, by the way people living on the street look out for one another.
“Even in their situation, they want to give and take care of each other,” she said. “We have everything, and we don’t think of taking care of each other.”
Photos courtesy of Humility Now.