Friendraiser Followup – Family Promise and West Side Neighborhood Housing Services Share Spotlight
By Seamus Gallivan
Huge thanks to the many new and minority of current friends who attended last night’s Friendraiser at the Sportsmens Tavern, perhaps our best yet! It was entirely inspiring to hear the different ways that people made their way to the gathering – from monthly regulars to regular readers of this site curious as to what it’s all about, to nonprofit professionals who got a mass email urging attendance, there were so many new faces, truly challenging my ability to go around the room and remember everyone’s name – I nearly pulled it off, too…how could I forget an Irish name like Molly? That was my first dog’s name, for cryin’ out loud…
There were many great individual stories, such as Hamburg residents Kristen Chilcott and Al Stockman, who responded to the Flurrious fest volunteer call from Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy we shared here last week but had yet to attend one of our own events – Kristen shared a particularly profound story of secretly listening to a supposedly empty church performance by a young Joe Donohue of the Albrights after I plugged upcoming events with the band. [Read here for more about Joe's church background and an Operation Good Neighbor church benefit for which he performed last year]
And in a great coincidence for which we’re grateful, we welcomed in the unsuspecting crew from the “Last Drink of the Month” club, which had chosen the Sportsmens as their spot of choice for their own last Thursday happy hour, thanks to Buffalo Repat Sara Emhof – who was featured here last year for her groundbreaking work engaging young citizens in government for the Close Up Foundation. That crew certainly got in the mix, most notably Buffalo Harbor Kayak owner Jason Schwinger, who pledged to donate a kayak for raffle at our Tributaries series supporting Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper!
But without question, the night’s spotlight shined brightest on two organizations that came out in great numbers – our featured cause Family Promise of Western New York, which had a bunch of staff and board members in attendance, and about ten folks from West Side/Black Rock-Riverside Neighborhood Housing Services, which was featured here last June for their NeighborWorks Week initiative in an article by Andrew Delmonte, and has quietly been following us since.
The focus on Family Promise was to draw feedback and ideas for a series of benefit house concerts we’re planning together, likely to launch in the fall. FPWNY director Jim Tamol painted a picture of a small organization belonging to a large nationwide network, sharing some cold, hard facts, such as the average age of a homeless person being eight years old, along with their inspiring mission to help find shelter, food, and work for homeless families. In addition to a handful of board members, Jim was joined by administrative assistant Alex Deitz and Americorps community partnership coordinator Megan Bingham – asked as to their daily duties, Tamol responded, “Alex does everything, and Megan does everything else.”
After Jim gave his spiel and I followed with a call for any kind of input/support for the house concert series, WSNHS director Linda Chiarenza stepped forward and said that she’d gladly host a house concert, and staff construction analyst Bill Buzak – a Sportsmens regular who’d worked with owner Dwane Hall to fix up the tavern’s façade with a matching grant from WSNHS – offered to work up his allegedly famous barbecue for the event. How bout it!
The big presence from WSNHS was thanks to assistant to the director Laura Sweat, who sent out a mass email to both their West Side and Black Rock-Riverside offices about the Friendraiser and succeeded in rallying most of the staff and some of the board as well. WSNHS is “dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of Buffalo’s neighborhoods by providing safe, affordable and sustainable housing opportunities for all,” offering “full-cycle lending agencies, with programs carrying customers through the entire process of buying a home–from financial fitness education before purchase, to closing cost assistance, to post-purchase education and home improvement loans.”
Not only did this crew share many inspiring stories throughout the night about their work and goals, but Laura also shared that she was a journalism major – safe to say, expect to hear a lot more from these folks here in the near future!
As always, we owe big thanks to the Hall family at the Sportsmens Tavern for offering the space and a one-hour open bar, which helped make it a rockin’ room by the time Alison Pipitone Band took hold – and thanks to Alison for taking my request of her “Long, Long Ladder,” as well as playing the greatest breakup song of all-time, Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”
If you missed last night’s Friendraiser, well, don’t think twice, it’s all right – “it ain’t no use for me to sit and wonder why, it don’t matter anyhow”…we all have our own lives to live and thankfully this here internet makes it easy to keep in touch – please feel free to reach out anytime about any of this, and stay tuned for the next Friendraiser next month, always at the Sportsmens!
