Friends Indeed : A Baltimore Program Matches Up Senior Citizens and Homeless Kids for Fun and Companionship

Evelyn Rockenbach is helping Baltimore’s homeless children because she knows tough times are often toughest on children.

What the 74-year-old mother of five didn’t expect when she volunteered is that the children would end up helping her.

Rockenbach is a volunteer in a program that matches older people with homeless children, freeing the children’s parents to work, find a place to live or just take a break.

Rockenbach walked into the Salvation Army’s Booth House shelter one day as a neighborly gesture. When the shelter director asked her to become a volunteer, she did, hoping to make some new, young friends.

And she found one in 12-year-old Jessica.

“She gave me this wonderful companionship,” said Rockenbach. “Her conversation was so much better than the grown-ups I talk to, so much more interesting and genuine. She had ideas.”

The We’ve Got No Place To Go program gives older people a sense of purpose, organizers say.

“We have a tendency to shelve our elderly,” said Miriam Charnow, director of intergenerational programs for the National Council on Aging. “But the program makes them feel safer and stronger. They in turn feel more important about who they are and what they contribute.”

Rockenbach took Jessica on outings twice a week while the girl lived at the shelter with her father, an unemployed construction worker. They went to Baltimore’s Science Center and the National Aquarium. Jessica and her father have since moved to another shelter.

Jessica was great company, Rockenbach said, and now she misses her.

“She was very bright. She argued just like Socrates. It was delightful,” she said.

Rockenbach lives across from the Booth House, a 30-day shelter for homeless families. At any one time there are 20 to 25 children living there.

Karen, a shy 13-year-old, lives at the shelter with her mother and 3-year-old sister. She said being there is a relief, but she hopes the family can find “a better house in a quiet neighborhood where there is no violence.”

In their first two days together, Rockenbach and Karen packed a lot in. They went to the aquarium, shopping and out for ice cream. They made cupcakes.

When asked to describe Rockenbach, Karen said she is “just a friend.” Rockenbach said the two hit it off from the start. “She’s very friendly. From the first day, she was very natural with me, just like she’d known me.”

Bryan, 11, lives at the shelter with his mother and three brothers. He has dreams of becoming a car designer.

Ed Scoggins, 69, takes Bryan on outings and helps with his homework. Scoggins also visits the shelter each Saturday to tell the children stories.

Bryan likes his volunteer very much but wishes he was younger “because I want him to last.”

A recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development study found that homeless families are increasing. Children make up 39% of the nation’s homeless. In Maryland, 58% of people turned away from shelters last year were parents with children, a statewide survey found.

Programs like the one in Baltimore show homeless children there are people who care about them and give single parents time to look for housing and jobs. “It’s hard to be a good parent when you’re living under that kind of stress,” Joan Elker, assistant director for the National Coalition for the Homeless, said.

Milwaukee and Dallas have similar programs. The Council on Aging received $124,311 from private sources to fund the programs for one year and chose the three cities because they contained large numbers of homeless people.

After a slow start, Booth House had recruited 11 volunteers by March.

Harriet Raskin, 66, said she volunteered for the program because she loves children. She made friends with Evan, 5, who lived at the shelter with his 23-year-old mother. The boy’s father is dead.

“To begin with, he was very reserved. But after two or three times with me, he became more relaxed. We went skipping down a street one day, that helped. We were laughing and singing, he had the best time,” she said.

On another occasion, Raskin took Evan to Pennsylvania Station to look at the trains and introduce him to the train conductor and engineer.

“When we walked in, he was really wide-eyed,” Raskin said. “I got him a little token he could keep so he could remember that he went to Pennsylvania Station.”

Raskin lost track of Evan after he left the shelter but is hoping the boy will call her.

“It’s a very hard world out there,” Raskin said. “Maybe in the smallest possible way I’m planting a seed in the mind of a child that there is a better way to live in the world than what he now knows.”