When a young Alan Graham chided a homeless man panhandling next to a taco stand in Austin, he could not have imagined that 36 years later he’d be living in a vibrant neighborhood of formerly homeless people, a neighborhood that he built.
In 1998, real estate developer Alan Graham launched Mobile Loaves and Fishes to help communities offer food, housing, and employment for neighbors coming up off the streets. What started out as one food truck and a mission to meet people where they are turned into a multi-million dollar operation with tens of thousands of volunteers who have never missed a night, delivering more than 6 million meals from their food trucks and lifting folks into permanent housing, jobs, and most importantly, community. Today, Community First! Village is a thriving neighborhood still growing to span 178 acres and eventually provide 1,900 permanent homes for people coming out of chronic homelessness, alongside those who support and care for them.
As you'll hear, Alan didn't plan on dedicating his life to serving the homeless, but a twist of fate and a leap of faith changed everything for him and for so many others.
For more on Alan Graham and Mobile Loaves and Fishes, visit mlf.org
Read Alan Graham’s book, Welcome Homeless
Connect with Kate on youtube.com/katetucker and instagram.com/katetuckermusic and please follow, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it means a lot to us!
If you liked this episode, listen next to Ron Pringle: An American Dream to End Hunger, from season 2, episode 2.
Hosted and executive produced by Kate Tucker, Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media in collaboration with Reasonable Volume.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Death, Sex & Money
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.