CENTRAL PHOENIX – St. Vincent de Paul is hoping to find community-minded professionals to take a place in the serving line to dish out breakfasts to the homeless.Dubbed the “Corporate Breakfast Club,” members are asked to start their day by preparing and serving meals to people in need at the new Human Services Campus for the homeless. Diners there run the gamut, from families to veterans to single women and men. Some are chronically homeless. Others are just down on their luck.
So far, two businesses, National Bank of Arizona and Qwest, have signed on to the breakfast club. On a recent morning, a group of bank employees helped serve up bagels, fruit, cottage cheese and cookies. This was the crew’s second visit to the dining room; employees had pledged to come once a month as a team-building exercise but also as a way to give back to the community.
The diners’ smiling faces, given their difficult circumstances, struck Jean Murphy, the bank’s branch administration manager.
Last year, St. Vincent’s moved from its old crumbling dining room downtown to the Human Services Campus at 11th Avenue and Jackson Street. The campus brings together myriad social service and government agencies at one location to provide shelter, meals, job assistance, health care and other support to the homeless. At any given time, the campus hosts 1,000 men and women.
