A couple of quotes I liked:
"If we have a goal, it's relationships," said Hugh Hollowell, 37, the ministry's founder and director. "All the good things that happen happen through relationships."
And:
"A lot of homeless work is predicated on the idea that 'We know how to fix you,'" Hollowell said. "A lot of social services are in the personal trainer mode. We're in the people mode. We think they're valuable because they exist."
I really admire what Love Wins is doing. You can follow their blog here.
I am proud to say that the founder and director, Hugh Hollowell (not Holloway, as the article goofs multiple times), is a reader of this blog. I had the good fortune to have coffee with him once, and I came away very impressed. I don't like to use words like 'intelligent' to describe someone, but he is certainly well-read, consuming books at a Tyler Cowen-like rate. Plus, he is an excellent writer, and he writes one of my favorite blogs, Hugh's Views.
One of my favorite posts of his was apparently lost when he upgraded the blog. I hope he won't mind me copying it from my RSS reader:
My Dad is the sort of guy who knows lots of people. I am not sure where he got this trait - he was an only child who grew up in the middle of nowhere, the son of a single mother - but somehow he ended up with it. I spent a lot of time in sales, and knew lot of folks who like to “network”, but Dad is the real deal. He really knows these people - he knows their wives, their kids, who married whom - he thrives on that. He was not gathering names or prospects so he could sell them something; he genuinely cares what they have to say. And it did not matter how wealthy or how poor they were - they always get the same treatment from Dad. When I was about 15, I got a job bagging groceries at the grocery store in the small town we lived near. I remember Dad telling me it was a good job because I would meet lots of people. I made a comment about how I was meeting lots of the important people in town - the banker, the lawyers, etc. He sat me down, knelt down and looked me in the eye and said, “Son, they are all important. Never forget that”. I never have.
