Close-Knit Group : MEND Marks 20 Years of Volunteers Patching Together Lives

Twenty years ago, three families who wanted to help the poor in the northeastern San Fernando Valley started food pantries in their garages.

From those humble beginnings, the fledgling charity the families named MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity) has grown into one of the most active organizations providing for the emergency needs of the northeast Valley’s poor.

“It’s just boomed,” said Marianne Haver Hill, the organization’s executive director. “There just is really such a desperate need out there.”

Last year, 400 MEND volunteers distributed food, clothing, furniture and other services to 40,000 people--all without any government funding. Just five years ago, 200 volunteers served only 7,000 people.

And, Hill said, she expects the number of people served to reach 50,000 by the end of this year.

The organization will mark its 20th year with a community open house from 1 to 4 p.m. today at its renovated two-story headquarters, 13460 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima. On display will be the group’s huge food storage warehouse, its neatly arranged racks of clothing, its furniture storeroom and its four classrooms.

“We want the community to see what we’re all about,” Hill said. “This is an organization of ordinary citizens who care about the poor. MEND is still very much a grass-roots organization and we want to keep it that way.”

MEND’s $420,000 annual budget comes from donations by individuals, churches, schools and civic organizations. Despite its growth over the years, the organization is still run primarily by volunteers. Five full-time and four part-time workers are the organization’s only paid staff members.

Hill described both board members and volunteers as “middle-class working people--not even upper middle-class.”

“It’s very different from the norm,” said Ed Rose of Mission Hills, one of the organization’s founders who remains active in MEND. “We wanted to make sure at least one person was home whenever there was a need,” he said of the group’s early days of operating out of garages. His wife, Carolyn, is president of the group’s board of directors.

Over the years, many other storefront charities on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima have closed down, because of either a lack of funding or volunteers. But MEND has continued to grow.

“The basis of the whole organization is that it has been blessed with a tremendous amount of caring people who don’t have any sort of hidden agenda,” Rose said.

Most of MEND’s clients are among the working poor or people who are temporarily down on their luck, Hill said. Many are recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America who pay high rents to live in garages, shacks or crowded trailers.

“Even if both the mother and father are working, there often is nothing left over for food or clothing with 70% to 85% of the family’s income going toward rent,” Hill said. “Others who come to us for help have been temporarily laid off from their jobs.”

Most clients are referred to MEND by churches or by their neighbors. All are interviewed to determine and verify their needs, Hill said.

In addition to basic needs, it is the “little extras” that MEND volunteers give to the people they serve that makes the organization special, said Gina Leita, MEND’s food services coordinator.

“About two months ago, a man came here for food for his family one day,” she said. “His nose was bleeding. We called and couldn’t find any hospital or clinic that would take him. Finally, one of our volunteers took him to Olive View, where he sat with the man for seven hours.”

Leita said doctors immediately diagnosed the man, only 25, as having leukemia, hospitalized him and gave him blood transfusions. “When the hospital wanted replacement blood, five of our volunteers immediately donated blood.”

Not all of the volunteers’ acts of selflessness involve tragedies. Some are merely opportunities to bring a moment of happiness into someone’s life.

For example, Leita keeps a freezer filled with decorated birthday cakes to add to grocery boxes for a child’s birthday.

“If I see a woman is pregnant, I stick some vitamins in with the basics,” said Leita, herself a former MEND client.

“I was divorced, hurting and had no job,” Leita said last week as she supervised the unloading of a truck of groceries picked up by MEND volunteers at a local supermarket. “A friend brought me here.”

Through MEND, Leita was able to find a job and a woman with whom to share a house. She said she was so appreciative of the help she received that she was a full-time volunteer for two years while working the night shift as a waitress.

Over the years, MEND volunteers also have located a prom dress for a teen-ager whose family couldn’t afford one, provided food for a quinceanera party for a dying teen-ager and helped a woman whose alcoholic husband was in jail start her own flower-arranging business.

As is the case with most charitable organizations, MEND always needs more donations and more volunteers.

For example, Peter Kirby, a retired film editor who serves as MEND’s volunteer furniture coordinator, said he has a huge list of people who want to donate items, but no one to pick them up. Volunteers also are needed to pick up food donated by area supermarkets.

“I could also use some refrigerators,” Kirby said.

“We need volunteer teachers, and they don’t have to be teachers,” Hill added. “One of our best teachers is an auto mechanic.”

Rose said he would eventually like to see more emphasis on education at MEND.

“A long-term goal is to help people become more educated to help themselves,” he said.