By: Javacia Harris Bowser
Each week Albert Schweitzer Fellow Eileen Knott meets with a group of people in Montgomery with past lived experiences of homelessness. Although the group shares dinner while together, they’re not meeting for a meal. They’re meeting with a mission.
“I put in front of the group the goal of forming a vision that they could share about what they’d like to see from the homelessness response system, or what a response to homelessness might look like ideally, and what actions they might take as a group to further that vision,” Eileen explains.
As part of her project for the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, Eileen has assembled a task force of individuals who will – based on lived experience and research – identify areas of improvement within the homelessness response system in Montgomery County.
The Definition of Homelessness
“The definition of homelessness is broad,” Eileen explains, adding that the group of eight participants represents this wide spectrum. Furthermore, people are unhoused for a myriad of reasons.
Some women are experiencing homelessness due to domestic violence. There’s a member of the group who is couch surfing and another who’s living in unsuitable housing. One woman is experiencing homelessness because her house burned down, and she doesn’t have home insurance. One member of the group was formerly incarcerated. Another struggled with substance use disorders. A couple participating in the group point to lack of education and poverty as their biggest obstacles.
Despite the challenges these participants have faced or are currently facing, they still want to serve others. That’s why one group member, who currently has a home, has started a ministry to help the unhoused community. Another member who once struggled with substance use but is now sober and has a safe place to live currently serves as a peer recovery specialist.
Being part of the task force not only allows participants to make their voices heard but gives them a chance to practice servant leadership too.
Our Higher Nature
Before the group could get to work on changes that needed to be made outside they had to establish a framework for inside.
“When they had their first meeting, they laid ground rules for how they wanted to be together, and everything can be tied back to how they’re reaching for their higher nature,” Eileen says. “They all agree that we all have capacities, and we’ve got this ability to choose to feed our lower nature or feed our higher nature. And they agree that, as a group, they want to feed their higher nature. Their goal is to see if they can influence the larger community when it comes to what to do about the state of homelessness and the need for housing and the need for services related to housing.”
To get to these answers, the group must ask questions and they need data. How many shelter beds are available in Montgomery County? How do the statistics on the unhoused population compare to the reality? How often and why are people turned away from shelters or sent from response centers without the help that they need and what happens next? These are just a few of the questions the group will tackle.
A New Frontier
Eileen, who’s pursuing a master’s in social work from Alabama State University, has partnered with the Mid-Alabama Coalition for the Homeless for her project.
It was during her time working as assistant to the executive director of Mid-Alabama Coalition for the Homeless that Eileen decided to go back to school to study social work.
“I have a bachelor’s degree in art history, but I decided pretty early in my working life that I didn’t want to pursue that,” she says. So Eileen began to work for several nonprofits addressing issues such as education, public health, and housing. At the Mid-Alabama Coalition for the Homeless, she helped manage programs.
“I was front of house, I was answering the phone, answering the door, and the executive director, who happens to also be a personal friend, said to me, ‘You know, Eileen, I can hear you and you’re trying to be a social worker. But you’re not a social worker.’”
But Eileen’s boss didn’t say this to her to stifle her passion for helping others. Instead, she spurred her to do more.
“She said, ‘It’s okay to think about going back to school and getting that degree,’” Eileen recalls. “All of a sudden, this new frontier opened up.”
Eileen began the Master of Social Work program at ASU in 2023 and will complete her studies in May of 2025. She hasn’t decided what her focus will be after graduating but right now she’s interested in working in mental health, addiction recovery, or – of course – homelessness response. No matter the field she chooses, she believes her ASF project is helping to prepare her for engaging with the communities she’ll be serving.
Once Eileen’s project is complete, she hopes the task force will continue. The group will vote by secret ballot to select a member to be the facilitator. Eileen hopes the group can also get connected with an established nonprofit organization to help sustain it. The board for the Mid-Alabama Coalition for the Homeless has shown interest in meeting with the group quarterly.
“I wish more people understood that homelessness is a product of our established systems that we have,” she says.
She believes that as a country, we often make decisions about how to invest our resources based on what’s best for us as individuals, not what’s best for the collective.
“Because we are all interconnected this malpractice of not considering the larger group is ultimately going affect us and one of the manifestations of this is homelessness,” she says. “We have an inclination to judge people for their choices — that they didn’t keep up or know better. It’s a lack of mercy or grace.”
It’s also an issue of trust or lack thereof. But Eileen trusts that expanding services for those experiencing homelessness will have a positive ripple effect.
“It’s not bailing people out or throwing resources down the drain,” she says. “Education and second chances and opportunities — those could deliver us gains and benefits as a collective.”
