Father Michael Barry and his team at Mary’s Mercy Center, too, may have heard Isaiah’s words last year when they formally launched plans to build a South Campus on Artesian Street in west San Bernardino that will include a men’s shelter.
“It’s the missing piece,” Father Barry says in a YouTube video describing the South Campus, which will focus on providing shelter, health services and job training for men. In the 1990s, Father Barry had expanded Mary’s Mercy Center, which provides food and basic services to the poor of San Bernardino, to include Veronica’s Home of Mercy and later Veronica’s Home of Mercy II to serve women and their young children attempting to escape drug abuse, domestic violence, homelessness or abortion.
Indeed, for these ministers to the poor, there is always a new way to serve those in need. A new challenge of poverty to be met.
“God has put in our heart and our mind to continue serving the poor and the needy,” said Gomez. “It’s a blessing.”
Gomez and Castorena, who are consecrated lay ministers, founded Martha’s Village and Kitchen in Coachella in 1989. Twenty-one years later, after they had built it into one of the Coachella Valley’s leading non-profit and social outreach organizations, they say God called them to a new ministry in Mecca.
“We knew it was a different population,” recalls Castorena. “We said ‘yes.’ We left everything.”
For the first few years that meant operating the Galilee Center from a parking lot on Harrison Street and building a new fundraising base from the ground up. But as they had done in the past, Gomez and Castorena marshaled support from Low Desert parishes and Catholic organizations, non-profits, service clubs and local government leaders to acquire a 22,000 square foot building and renovate it for their ministry.
The Galilee Center can now house donated goods including food, clothing, shoes, baby items and other necessities. One end of the building includes a cooling center, open on weekday afternoons for farmworkers when they come in from the fields. Gomez, who worked the fields, herself, as a girl, recalled without irony at the grand opening of the Galilee Center that she remembered bringing food there when it was a packing house.
A year ago, Mary’s Mercy Center acquired nine acres on Artesian Street about 1.5 miles south of its existing facility in San Bernardino for the development of a South Campus. The four-phased project would include a men’s shelter, a medical and education building, transitional housing, apartments, a community garden and community care facilities.
Mike Hein, Vice President/Administrator of Mary’s Mercy Center, says the devastating effects of the recession worsened already difficult circumstances for many men in the San Bernardino area who struggle sustain themselves and their families.
“San Bernardino is the second poorest city in the nation,” Hein notes. “We want to help the men come into the transitional part of it, get them training so that they can go back out into society and do bigger and better things with their lives.”
The South Campus is estimated to cost $12.2 million and the capital campaign to raise the money is just beginning, Hein said, adding that they hope to break ground on the first phase, a men’s shelter that would house 120 men per night, in 2014.
Danny, a guest at the weekly lunch and food bag distribution at Mary’s Table on Aug. 28, said that while he is not homeless, he knows of many who would benefit from the planned men’s shelter.
“They wouldn’t have to sleep on the street,” he said. “They’d have a place for themselves, where they could sleep and eat and wash.
“There’s not a good chance for them now.”
If history is any indication, Mary’s Mercy Center will succeed in its latest expansion plan. Today, it serves nearly 100,000 plates of food each year and distributes 12,000 emergency food bags while also providing basic medical, transportation and infant care services.
“We started Mary’s Table back in 1987 and we were going to stay open for one month,” Father Barry said in his video. “Something happened because we’re still going.”