Sacred Places Spring 2010 | Page 11

a retired educator who runs the program as a volunteer. “But sit with me for 45 minutes and you might find out you’re eligible for $176 in food stamps.” Michael Polembro, a resident nurse, is also on site every week to perform health checks and monitor medications. In keeping with Breaking Bread’s holistic approach to meeting the needs of the homeless, Michael recently introduced a pre-lunch meditation session that has become very popular. One homeless man, who struggles with anger management issues, credits meditation with giving him “a longer fuse.” The hair salon began as another practical service that, with Bruce’s empathetic and ebullient personality, soothes troubled men’s spirits as well. As he carefully guides his razor across a man’s scalp, Bruce responds to what he thinks each customer needs: cheerful patter, advice or a listening ear. “I don’t just cut their hair,” he says, “it’s a little ministry, too. I got you in the chair, you can’t move,” he jokes, then turns serious. “Sometimes when you get these men one on one, you break them down. I say ‘Great. It’s all right to cry. It eases the soul.’” In many ways, Bruce embodies Broad Street Ministry’s participatory, holistic model for serving its urban community. He was himself homeless when he first came to a church service, drawn in by the choir’s “heavenly voices.” Bill and Wendy recognized his talents not only as a musician, but also as a trained carpenter and plumber. By Bruce’s estimate, he has renovated at least six rooms in the century-old church to keep expanding and improving the services Broad Street Ministry can offer the homeless, including an office for a psychologist who comes in three times a week, and his own cozy, welcoming salon in a corner of the basement boiler room. Street Ministry aims to expand. The church’s location and mission made it an ideal setting for one of Bethesda Project’s winter “cafés, ” providing temporary shelter for the most intransigent homeless in the coldest months of the year. “If we hadn’t provided this space these people would be out in this bitter cold and dying,” says Sgro. “There’s something about [a church],” he adds, “that gets people inside. And if you don’t get them inside, you can’t work with them. We have placed a lot of people from the cafés into more permanent housing.” “It’s a dynamic, growing place,” says Cy Schwartz. In addition to Breaking Bread, the church offers free dinner after worship services on Sunday, and hosts a monthly No Barriers Dinner, designed to bring Philadelphia residents from all walks of life together for a family-style meal. A plan is also in place to renovate an ample but outdated kitchen, and Bruce hopes that showers will be the next amenity he’s asked to build. Right now, though, Bruce is sending a customer off with a bracing splash of Aqua Velva. He might run into the same guy later in the week, sitting on the street or camped out on the Parkway. Wherever he sees his customers, he greets them as friends. Freshly shampooed, hair well trimmed, “they look,” he says, “like a million bucks. And they’re feeling like a million bucks.” “It’s an amazing retrofitting of a space that wasn’t designed to do anything but provide utilities for the building,” says Cy, the Benefits Bank counselor, of the back-room salon. In a space not much larger than a coatroom, Bruce has set up a barber’s chair, a shampooing station with sink, a lounge chair for waiting, and a mirror, donated by a mosaic artist. Assisted by Camille, a student at University of the Arts who volunteers as hair washer, Bruce typically cuts “twentytwo heads in two hours.” As other programs that serve the homeless are being hit by increased numbers and dwindling funding, Broad The Exemplars Project is funded by a grant from the William Penn Foundation Sacred Places • Spring 2010 • 10