By Jessica Narez

On Sunday, March 17th, the Salesian Missionary Volunteer Program, in collaboration with various Salesian works, organized a homeless outreach in the Skid Row community, providing meals to over 500 individuals living on the streets. Volunteers from St. Mary’s and St. Isabel Salesian parishes, along with young Confirmation students led by catechist Anna Rosales, joined forces. Additionally, Salesian High School Bishop Mora contributed nearly 15 students from its Onward program under the guidance of Edgar Alonso Silva. The Salesian Family Youth Center’s SHOUT Program sent ten youths accompanied by family members, led by René Castillo, Angel Castillo, and Angélica Rojas. Furthermore, St. Dominic Savio Parish dispatched five members, veterans of Camp Savio and the Youth Ministry, led by JC Montenegro. In total, close to 50 volunteers came together for this initiative. Special thanks were extended to Juan Guzmán, leader of Restless Hearts Foundation, for consistently providing food donations for this monthly Homeless Outreach. Here, we present the reflections of Jessica Narez, a 19-year-old who shares her poignant experience from the day’s outreach:

My name is Jessica Narez, and I was a SYLC participant in 2022. Today I was presented with an opportunity to volunteer in a homeless outreach with the Salesian family. We met at the Salesian Family Youth Center in Boyle Heights, then we traveled to St. Mary’s church to prepare the food.

Seeing so many people come together to give back to the community was very inspiring. Despite not knowing anyone, everyone was very friendly and welcoming. We all worked together in order to make sandwiches and prepare the food donation bags with water and a granola bar.

This experience made me reflect on how blessed and fortunate I am. After we had made all of the sandwiches and food bags, we headed to Catch 21, where we were greeted by a gentleman named Kevin. He is very involved in helping the Skid Row community, because he was once in their shoes.

After meeting with Kevin, he led us down Skid Row where we gave food bags to people and families in need. It was a very humbling experience seeing the conditions which these homeless people were living in. It was also saddening to see the amount of homeless children.

As I was walking down the street, I saw two kids playing soccer and I found Christ through them. Their smile and laughter brought me joy and it inspired me because despite their situation, they still chose to see the joy.

This experience impacted me significantly, something that I took away from this experience is that I am so blessed to have a roof over my head and food on my table. This experience taught me to continue to work hard in school, and give back to others because you never know what someone might be going through.