[Naperville, IL, 2/28/14] Diane Nilan, selected for the University of St. Francis Sister Clare Award, is in some ways the least likely choice. The bumper sticker
displayed inside her road-weary motorhome gives a clue: Well-behaved women
seldom make history. Despite the
contrast, for her unconventional and unrelenting efforts as an activist for homeless
families, Nilan will receive her recognition in Joliet on March 12 at USF, 7 p.m. in Sue Turk Hall.
40 years after graduating from the College of St. Francis,
23 years after leaving this city where she spent the first segment of her adult
life, Nilan (bio, PDF) will roll into town following a 6-month stint of mostly solo
cross-country travel where she filmed and produced a new documentary, Worn Out Welcome Mat, and addressed a variety of audiences on the issue of invisible
homelessness, particularly families and youth. Nilan sold her townhome in 2005
to take to the nation’s backroads, living in Tillie, her small motorhome.
This award has generated a considerable opportunity for
Nilan’s nonprofit organization, HEAR US Inc., thanks to the generosity of an
anonymous donor who will match every dollar, up to $10,000, raised in honor of
the Sister Clare Award. Board member Marilyn McGowan, who nominated Nilan for
this honor, stresses that her frugal one-woman operation makes a major impact
on a national level. “Diane can quietly sit and listen to a mother’s
devastating story of homelessness and convert those stories into powerful
advocacy and awareness tools,” points out McGowan.
“I’ve never totally left Joliet,” Nilan admits. She’s still
in contact with former students and even some people she once assisted at the
Will County PADS program, the precursor to Catholic Charities’ Daybreak Shelter
she started while she worked at Catholic Charities in the mid-‘80s. When
notified of the USF honors and asked what people could bring to the award
ceremony to help her work, Nilan demurred, offering to generate needed supplies for Daybreak and local homeless students instead. Those attending the award
ceremony are asked to bring nonperishable food items for Daybreak or school
supplies for Joliet District 86’s homeless students.
Nilan chuckles when she reflects on her activism, incubated
during her CSF days. “We created a ruckus over the quality of food the
cafeteria served,” but also focused on other weighty issues, including the Viet
Nam war. She provided leadership for humanitarian causes, almost flunking out
of college in the process. “I give a lot of credit to the Joliet Franciscans,”
Nilan admits. “They managed to hone my leadership skills in such a way to not
discourage my efforts to seek justice on behalf of the oppressed.”
After leaving Joliet in 1990, she directed the PADS shelter
at Hesed House in Aurora for 13 years, simultaneously working on Charlie’s Bill, a successful venture to guarantee access to education for the state’s
homeless students. The bill passed 20 years ago and served as model legislation
for the nation, thanks in part to a partnership between Nilan and (Ret.)
Congresswoman Judy Biggert (R-IL).
Implementing that legislation, the McKinney-Vento HomelessEducation Assistance Act of 2001, has been Nilan’s focus since it passed. She
oversaw 305 Chicagoland school districts’ compliance with the law, and in 2005,
when that project shifted, she took to the backroads of the U.S. to film a
documentary of what students thought about their experiences of homelessness
and what school meant to them to help educators and other audiences better
understand the plight of millions of children and youth.
And now she’s come full circle, returning to her roots to
accept this honor, but not standing still for long. She’s scheduled for a trip
to New York in April.
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