Serendipity and Need: Doc and Homeless Advocate Reconnect

September 19, 2014

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Contact: Diane Nilan, 630/267-5424

Diane Nilan (L) and Karen Maloney inside Tillie, the
good Karma motorhome being exchanged. 

[Naperville, IL] “Dialing for docs” 20 years ago connected Diane Nilan, former shelter director at

Hesed House in Aurora with Dr. Karen Maloney, a physician from the St. Charles area. Nilan was recruiting volunteer medical personnel for Rainbow Clinic at the former incinerator turned shelter. On Monday, Nilan will hand over the keys to her motorhome to Maloney, solving a problem for both women.

The two met again at a volunteer mission in Tanzania in 2013. “It was great to catch up and learn that our paths never veered too far away,” said Nilan, founder/president of a one-woman national nonprofit, HEAR US Inc., giving voice and visibility to homeless children and youth.

Nine years ago, she sold her townhome and 

Nilan and Tillie in Nevada

most of her stuff to purchase a 27’motorhome to enable her to chronicle homelessness among millions of children, youth and families nationwide. Nilan put on 183,000 miles as she filmed several award-winning documentaries and conducted countless presentations to raise awareness of kids and parents with nowhere to go.

The time came to sell “Tillie the Turtle,” her 9-year-old motorhome, and only home, but Nilan could find no buyers. Maloney, starting a program to provide medical care to uninsured residents and homeless persons in the western suburbs, needed a motorhome, but her nonprofit Carein' Connections lacked the funds to buy one. Nilan happened to mention she was trying to sell Tillie. Serendipity? Perhaps.

On Monday, Nilan will hand over Tillie’s keys to her doc-friend, knowing that the legacy of this roadworthy motorhome will continue. Maloney will adapt the inside space to provide medical care and other services to those who lack resources for basic human needs, especially medical care.

Wednesday, after an early morning prayer breakfast presentation in Joliet, Nilan will point her rental van to Austin, TX where her new set of wheels await. She’s downsizing, making it possible for her to pursue stories of homeless children and youth in far off places in a more economically and ecofriendly fashion.

Her first Tillie2 trip will be with her “Babes of Wrath” pal Pat LaMarche on a trip to Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. The intrepid travelers have dubbed their trip “Homeless on the Range,” designed to call attention to homelessness, even on a Native American reservation.

Maloney and her colleagues need to quickly shape and stock Tillie into the medical miracle van that will serve hundreds of uninsured, desperate adults and kids.

These two nonprofits, and their unique founders, will carry on their essential missions, knowing that their paths will inevitably cross, and that lots of people will be better for it.

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‘Bring It On!’ Kick-off of Cross-Country Tour on Behalf of Homeless Kids and Families

Photo (c) Diane Nilan

[Naperville, IL, 1/17/13] Winter weather at its worst. Blinding dust storms. Scorn from unenlightened community members. Seemingly endless, stark drives wrapped around arduous events. “Bring it on!” two determined women (Pat LaMarche and Diane Nilan) dare Mother Nature. Traveling as the Babes of Wrath on behalf of homeless children, families and youth, these two women are about to embark on a grueling month-long, 5,000-mile awareness-raising tour of the southwest part of this country.

This tour, of their own free will under the banner of HEARUS Inc., Nilan’s Naperville-based nonprofit organization, begins Tuesday, 1/22 in Little Rock, AR. Beleaguered local service providers along the route are eager for the Babes to land in their cities and towns. “We’re so glad SOMEONE is doing advocacy,” one shelter director told Nilan. She bemoaned HUD’s ineffective “structure” supposedly addressing homelessness on a local level, known as the “continuum of care,” local agency representatives charged with translating inadequate U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) resources into services for homeless persons.

One critical issue in discussions with concerned local leaders is a dreadful one—how families with babies and toddlers are ignored, part of the pattern of abuse and neglect perpetuated at the federal level. The consensus: families have never been a priority. In fact, they are very low on HUD's homeless subpopulations served (and funded).

HUD says they’re allowing the local community to set priorities as they point out that there's enough federal money to go around. In this imperfect world, the “Littles” lose.

When the Littlest Nomads (babies and toddlers, with parents) are ignored, it creates a feeder program of homeless adults. Little kids, in their prime growth stage, miss out on nurturing, nutrition, developmental opportunities, and they absorb the toxic influences—emotional and environmental. They’re ill-prepared for school and they often struggle and fail. Chances are their family’s housing situation remains precarious. Poverty follows them everywhere.

When these kids end up as homeless adults, no one should be surprised. But everyone with the power to do something should be ashamed. The feds get left off the hook when local communities try to do things on their own. For every local community able to step up to the daunting challenge of providing housing and other essential services to impoverished families, hundreds—or thousands—cannot, or will not, do the job.

Pat (L) and Diane
on their 2011
Southern Discomfort tour

Pat and Diane, Babes of Wrath, will listen, learn and challenge communities large and small to bolster their local efforts and to let their elected officials know that this is very much like the Great Depression, with millions of people—babies, toddlers, kids, parents, and single adults—in need of life-saving shelter, food, heath care and other vital services. LaMarche will blog on Huffington Post, Nilan on Alternet.

Their message will make them as popular as the great dust clouds that continue to batter the southwestern part of the country. But, as history teaches, eventually Depression era officials caught on and implemented common sense dust-reduction strategies. With homeless people small and large rolling like tumbleweed across the land, this nation’s approach toward homelessness needs rethinking. Sooner rather than later, they hope.

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Most Important News of the Day

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Contact: Pat LaMarche epicjourney10@gmail.com

                    Diane Nilan diane@hearus.us, 630-267-5424

                    Mary Ann Parks maryannparks@gmail.com

This Is the Most Important News of the Day

Homeless People Around the Nation Would Beg You to Cover It: 

If they weren’t busy begging for a home.

Long time homeless advocates, Diane Nilan and Pat LaMarche, begin a 4600 mile trek across the lower half of the wealthiest nation in the world on Monday.  But with the inaugural, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the National Rifle Associations’s Gun Appreciation day, the cause of homelessness is at risk of receiving little no coverage at all.  

Pat LaMarche (L) and
Diane Nilan at a screening
of "on the edge: Family
Homelessness in America,"
in Mobile, AL 2/11

“Not one of these 'bigger stories' is independent of the issue of homelessness.  President Obama’s re-election and consequent 2nd inaugural came about in no small part because his opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney, maligned the needy in his infamous 47% quote,” explained LaMarche.  “One of our greatest civil rights advocates who we honor this week spoke of the economic and social ills which plagued our nation and subjugated its people,” continued LaMarche. 

“And then there’s domestic violence – which cannot be separated from the other issues of gun violence in this nation – which is a leading cause of homelessness. We predict that not a single sound bite will be devoted to this national scourge.  How can anyone wave a flag in patriotism knowing that millions of their countrymen languish in poverty?” queried Nilan, founder and director of HEAR US, a national advocacy group for homeless children, youth and their families. 

So these two women –  who have both authored books about their experiences living with, working with, and living as homeless people – will set out across the nation to share the experience of a new year’s homeless population. 

“Some places we go we’ll talk about what we’ve learned in our years working with the poor and disenfranchised, but more often we’ll listen,” explained LaMarche who will be gathering new material for her writing.  “And Diane will screen her award winning documentaries about the homeless folks she’s encountered.” 

“Most of all,” Nilan added, “we hope to help the advocates on the ground in local America, USA, to tell their stories to their local media.  Once you get to know people experiencing homelessness, you realize it’s not an us/them issue: it’s an all of us issue.”

Links to LaMarche and Nilan’s books as well as Nilan’s documentaries are available at www.hearus.us The map of their journey as well as itinerary are available there as well as at the EPIC Journey facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/EPICJourney2010

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Vazquez, NIU Professor, To Be Honored for Documentaries on Homeless Kids

Laura Vazquez (r) and Diane Nilan spent countless hours
in the NIU Avid Film Lab. (Photo courtesy NIU)

[Albuquerque, NM, Oct. 15, 2012] Laura Vazquez, Media Studies professor at Northern Illinois University, will receive the prestigious Distinguished Service and Leadership Award for her years of film work from the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth at their national conference in Albuquerque on Oct. 29.

Since 2006, Vazquez, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, has collaborated on stories of homeless women, children and youth with Diane Nilan, president of HEAR US Inc., a Naperville, IL based national nonprofit "giving voice and visibility to homeless children and youth." The 2 women, relentless social justice activists in their own fields, were connected by a friend/colleague Tom Parisi, Media Relations Specialist at NIU, a former beat reporter for the Aurora Beacon News where Nilan ran a shelter for many years.

"I’ve spent hundreds of hours sitting next to Laura at NIU’s film lab with eyes glued to the editing screens. She’s put me at ease—me, the former shelter director with no film experience—and she’s given me the opportunity to shape our video tools in a mutually respectful process," stated Nilan. "She’s encouraged my fledgling documentary making efforts, and has willingly helped in ways far beyond what I’d feel I could ask. And she’s worked hard to learn about homelessness."

Among Vazquez's accomplishments, her efforts led to the PBS airing on the edge: Family Homelessness in America, a powerful documentary featuring stories of seven women from across the country sharing their gripping accounts of homelessness. The film took top honors in the prestigious Broadcast Education Association's 2011 Festival of Media Arts competition.  

Nilan, who nominated her colleague for this award, points to the rare legislative success for homeless students, passage of the FAFSA Fix for Homeless Kids Act, sponsored by Congresswoman Judy Biggert (R-IL-13). Vazquez traveled to DC to film homeless youth lobbying their legislators to remove barriers to their attending college. Tom Parisi suggested they meet after Nilan returned from her maiden backroads voyage filming homeless kids in 2006. Vazquez and her students took Nilan's footage and compiled it into an acclaimed heart-breaker, My Own Four Walls. 

Anti-poverty activist and journalist Pat LaMarche offered an observation about the impact of Vazquez's work, "Laura’s body of work gives the average American a chance to witness the lives of folks without having to leave the comfort of their homes, churches or civic organizations." Her films are available through HEAR US, http://hearus.us.

"The biggest obstacle to ending homelessness in this country," Nilan stated, "is ignorance. Laura's incalculable contributions to eradicating ignorance and creating compassion have done more than any of us will ever know." 

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