Homelessness Activist Selected For Top Joliet Franciscan Honors

Press Release......................................................................................................For Immediate Release

[Naperville, IL] Despite all the trouble Diane Nilan caused the Joliet Franciscan Sisters, they will present her with the Mother Alfred Moes Award, their highest honor, for her decades of work with homeless children and adults. The presentation will be made during the Franciscan Autumn Fest, Oct. 25, at the Patrick C. Haley Mansion in Joliet. 

Nilan, with her long, speckled history with the Joliet Franciscans, credits them with her moral fortitude that galvanized her spirit to work on behalf of homeless children and adults. The Sisters taught her from 3rd grade through college, and for a time Nilan considered joining their ranks.  She is now founder and president of HEAR US Inc., a national nonprofit giving voice and visibility to homeless children and youth.

In the mid-80s, Nilan spearheaded the Joliet’s first homeless shelter, Will County PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), now Daybreak. After leaving Joliet, Nilan ran the PADS shelter at Hesed House in Aurora for many years, leading efforts to start the Rainbow Clinic and spurring legislative advocacy campaigns that gave Illinois homeless persons the right to vote, established the IL Housing Trust Fund, and guaranteed access to education for homeless students, in Illinois then nationwide.

According to Nilan, the only thing she and Mother Alfred Moes, a woman who didn’t hesitate to respond to desperate needs around her, have in common is that both taught at St. John’s School in Joliet. 

Not surprisingly, the Sisters disagree. The Mother Alfred Moes Award “honors the pioneering spirit that exists in an individual…one who is a visionary just as Mother Alfred was.” Along with Nilan, the Will-Grundy Medical Clinic will be honored for their work with the medically underserved.

According to the Sisters, “The foundress of the Joliet Franciscans, Mother Alfred Moes, was a woman ahead of her time. She was a pioneer, a visionary, who used her own dowry to transform her vision into service.  Mother Alfred responded not only to the needs of the people of Joliet, but wherever the need of communities across the country called her.”

For the past 10 years, Nilan has been living in a small motorhome, traveling over 225,000 miles in 48 states, chronicling the plight and promise of homeless families and youth under the banner of her unconventional one-woman nonprofit organization, HEAR US (www.hearus.us). She’s made several documentaries and short videos of those experiencing homelessness sharing their stories. Her latest was just released, Worn out Welcome Mat - Kansas. 

Nilan learned  RVing and videography on the road. She relentlessly pursues audiences from Congress to California, exposing them to little-known realities experienced by millions of invisible homeless families and youth. 

“When all is said and done,” said Nilan, “the Joliet Franciscans have shaped me more than I’ll ever realize. Franciscan values have affected my life choices. For that I’ll be eternally grateful.” 

For reservations or more information about the event, 815-725-8735, x116.

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Plea Issued for Supplies for Joliet-area Homeless Families, Students

[Naperville, IL, March 7] 

Diane Nilan, founder of Will County’s first homeless shelter (Will County PADS), returns to Joliet early next week to be honored by her alma mater, University of St. Francis, on Wednesday evening, 7:00 at the Sue Turk Theater. Nilan has been chosen for the Sister Clare Award, given to honor “… women of vision who have transformed the world in their time…who make a positive, transformative impact in the community; inspire and serve as role models for other women; and are committed to …society.”

When asked how the University of St. Francis could help her nonprofit organization, Nilan suggested a collection of items for both Daybreak shelter and District 86’s homeless student program. Items needed include: diapers, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hairbrushes, shower gel, razors, underwear, socks, and sweatpants. Additionally, District 86 needs school supplies and packs of kids’ underwear, kids’ socks, and gift cards. Drop-off: 1433 Essington Road, Joliet or bring to Wednesday evening’s event.

In September, before leaving on her latest trip, she visited with Courtney Suchor, Daybreak shelter director. “I was delightfully impressed with the scope of their program,” Nilan observed. “But I shudder to think of all the families they must turn away.” While in New York City at a conference in January, Diane also connected with Alice Manning-Dowd, District 86’s homeless liaison. They knew each other when Nilan was working with Chicago area districts on implementing the federal homeless education law.

“These 2 essential programs serve a hidden population in the community,” Nilan pointed out. Her work with HEAR US Inc., the organization she founded in 2005, takes her across the country chronicling the plight and promise of invisible homeless children and youth. “It takes a lot to shock me, but I’m astounded and appalled at how widespread family and youth homelessness is nationwide,” Nilan lamented.

Marilyn McGowan, an Associate with the Joliet Franciscans and HEAR US board member who’s known Diane since they were in college, nominated her. “I have been inspired by what this one person is trying to do through her work,” McGowan said. She is encouraging people to donate to a matching fund created in honor of Nilan’s Sister Clare Award that will support HEAR US’s unique and essential work. Donations up to $10,000 will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000. Information, including the article and donation link, may be found on www.hearus.us.

The Sister Clare Award will be presented at 7 pm followed by a reception. Nilan, returning from months filming and speaking across the country, looks forward to reconnecting with families and friends she knew in her 20 years living in Joliet. She’ll stay her motorhome on the USF campus Tuesday through Thursday so she can speak to students on the topic of family/youth homelessness.

Her dream for her return to Joliet? A generous community response to the collection of items for homeless families. “May the pile be as high as the piles of snow that afflict the area!”

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Sister Clare Award for Rolling Activist

[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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