(upbeat music) (air whooshes) - Lending a helping hand.

We look at local organizations that are providing food, furniture, free books, and much more on this episode of "You Oughta Know."

(upbeat music continues) (air whooshes) Welcome to "You Oughta Know."

I'm Shirley Min.

Compassion and concern for others is the motivation behind the stories you're about to see.

The Philadelphia Furniture Bank helps make houses into homes for those coming out of homelessness.

Their story in a few minutes.

But first, an organization that provides food to those in need teams up with a delivery service to help feed local seniors.

(gentle music) DoorDashers are lined up in the North Philly parking lot of Share Food Program, each waiting to pick up roughly 10 food boxes.

The 32-pound boxes are going to low-income seniors in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Chester Counties as part of Share's Food for Seniors program.

The food bank runs the largest senior hunger relief program in all of Pennsylvania.

(upbeat music) - This program to us is so core to, really to our DNA as an organization, that ultimately we're about access to nutritious food and eliminating any barriers to access.

It started as, you know, Share Food Program organizing volunteers to do, in the first month, about 800 home deliveries a month.

After that, it was a little over a thousand, and it kept growing.

Grew so large that we knew it was beyond what our capacity was within our volunteers.

So we ended up bringing in a third party, DoorDash, to help us coordinate the delivery to all of those seniors.

They've been a huge and helpful partner for us in being able to scale that program up.

(bright music) - [Shirley] Share sends out 4,500 food boxes with DoorDash a month, making the food bank the undisputed leader when it comes to DoorDash pickups.

More delivery orders than any store or restaurant in the world.

- And we're proud that we're doing across the country this groundbreaking work here in Philadelphia at Share Food Program.

But then there's a sadness that we have to do this work at all.

(gentle music) - [Shirley] On this day, 1,000 boxes are marked for delivery, the highest number of single-day deliveries the food bank has ever done.

- [George] It's a 32-pound box of food, it's a heavy box of food.

A lot of the seniors that we serve might not be driving themselves.

They might be on public transportation.

This makes it so much easier for them to get access to the nutritious food that they need.

- [Shirley] Boxes packed by dedicated volunteers.

Share relies on their volunteers to stuff the food boxes with shelf-stable foods like cereal, juice, and canned goods.

(gentle music continues) - [George] To come into a place like this, to see community rally around the work that we're doing here, gives you a lot of hope and inspiration for what we can as a society be able to do.

I hate that we have to do this work at all, but to see community come together in this way, I think, is really inspiring for all of us here at Share Food Program.

(gentle music fades) (air whooshes) (truck beeping) - Dining table?

- Yeah.

So he has a very small, like, dining room space.

- Okay.

- Thinking like one TV stand, one night nightstand?

- Sure.

- Furniture is one of the least recycled items in our economy, so we're there to catch it so that we can give it to people who need it.

(bright music) My name is Tom Maroon, and I'm the director of the Philadelphia Furniture Bank.

Philadelphia Furniture Bank is a solution to a problem where the city and agencies that work with homeless folks made a big push to get people into housing, but they were spending a lot of their resources on new furniture.

So, Pathways to Housing PA decided to start a furniture bank for the whole city so they can have a furniture resource without a huge cost.

Pathways to Housing has been around for over a decade, and their solution to homelessness was unique at the time, where folks are given, unconditionally, subsidized housing right off the street or right out of the shelter.

They would buy the furniture new or they wouldn't have the resources and put people in empty units.

And then you'd have folks with professional therapeutic and clinical skills running around the city trying to find a bed and a nightstand and a sofa and, you know, a table.

And they would, you know, be hitting up their cousins and neighbors and family members just to try and find their clients basic furniture.

Could take them a year to find the furniture for folks.

We have a member agency model.

We have over 60 agencies that are members of the furniture bank, and they send us their formerly homeless clients.

And now we furnish over 1,500 households a year.

Institutions also donate.

College and universities, hotels.

We take some office furniture, not all of it, but you can go to our website to find out what we take and do not take.

We understand that, you know, we're a furniture resource for agencies all over the city that deal with folks who are struggling from homelessness, mental illnesses, addictions.

And so we understand that that's where the real strength of the relationship of the healing process happens, and that furniture's just a part of that process.

So we try everything we can to support the case managers.

And when they bring folks to the warehouse and the case managers helps people start thinking about not just getting off the street, building a home and building a life.

A house is more than just four walls.

A home is a place where you can have a place to sit, where you can invite people over.

We found that folks are able to deal with those issues in the comfort of their own home rather than in a shelter or on the street, and furniture is a big part of that.

You know, our greatest compliment is when a client hugs their case manager and says, "Thank you for all this stuff."

The case manager just brought 'em here, but the case manager also brought 'em off the street, right, and helped them get their housing.

- These next organizations are available when a medical need arises.

We introduce you to a program that loans out wheelchairs, walkers, and other types of medical equipment; a place that provides support to cancer patients and their families in a home-like setting; and a dental practice that cares for adults and children with disabilities.

(uplifting music) - My name is Dr. Jordan Strott, and I'm one of the dentists here at Special Smiles.

I've been a dentist for over 11 years, and I've had the pleasure of caring for the special needs population for all of those 11 years.

- We know our patients, they're here every year.

Special Smiles, it's important for us that patient knows what we're doing.

- From the time we walked in the door to the people that work here, the comfort level was just the greatest thing.

And for her, everybody was pleasant.

It was a sort of like family atmosphere.

So it was a great experience coming in, and it was, like, better than anywhere we had been.

- Pennsylvania Department of Human Services at that time were recognizing that there was a lack of access and quality care for the most severely compromised special needs patients.

They requested if I could build a facility that would treat these patients and provide the highest quality of care but on a much larger scale.

The only patients that we see are patients who require general anesthesia.

They must be put to sleep in order to accomplish their dentistry safely.

We basically see patients in two visits.

The first visit is an evaluation.

The patient will come in.

We'll examine them if the patient is cooperative enough.

We'll go through their medical history, 'cause most of these patients have fairly complex ones.

Then we'll set them up for an appointment after they're medically cleared, and we'll be putting them to sleep.

And then we do all their dentistry in one visit.

That includes cleaning, examination, x-rays, scaling, fillings, extraction, root canal work if necessary.

- The most challenging part of working with special needs individuals is catering to each individual's particularities.

Some individuals don't like bright lights, some individuals don't like certain sounds, some don't like certain words or phrases.

But as we get to know these individuals, we do make notes to their certain particularities so we can make it a better experience for them.

(gentle music) My personal hope would be for the special needs community, is that more dental professionals have more exposure to caring for the population so we have an increase in access to care.

- When I hear that a mother has called our office and said, "Can you take care of my adult child?"

And they've been looking for years, if not a decade, to find a home where they can actually get all their dentistry done.

And when we tell them that we're gonna do everything, and in one visit, and then you hear that the parent starts crying.

They're tears of joy because they actually have found a dental home for their child.

What can I say?

You know, nothing gives us greater joy and pleasure.

(soft music) (air whooshes) (gentle music) - Our founder, who just happens to be my son, my third son, really was an extraordinary human being, long before a cancer diagnosis entered our world.

Nick was the kind of guy that everybody loved.

He was a tremendous athlete, played three sports at Ridley High School.

He was genuine, smart, and selfless.

He was the consummate teammate.

He was a Division I athlete.

He accepted a scholarship at Hofstra University for men's lacrosse.

Then cancer enters the picture.

He withdrew from school and immediately, you know, started treatment at Penn.

Nick was the kind of guy that was very observant.

He just really started to question, you know, why is my mother sleeping on a chair?

You know, why isn't there anything for these patients to do during the day?

He said, "I want to be able to do something.

I wanna make a difference."

From his hospital bed, he outlined and set the blueprints and the roadmap, ah, for the foundation.

We were leaving the hospital, on hospice.

He said, "Mom, I want other people to benefit from my life, other people to follow in my footsteps."

And he said, "Promise me.

You know, you have the ability to take this to the heights that it needs to go to.

This lacrosse community, this brotherhood of mine, they're never gonna turn their backs, and we're gonna be successful.

And as long as their hearts are beating, I'm still alive."

And I said, "I promise, I promise you this.

I promise you that I will do my best."

And that was 17 years ago.

The HEADstrong Foundation is a non-traditional nonprofit.

What does that mean?

It's a lot of $25, (chuckles) right?

It's a lot of donations, so like a little engine that could, right?

That has really transformed now into major giving.

Families travel into Philadelphia from far and wide.

People are coming in for advanced treatment.

Once somebody finds out about Nick's House, it's simple.

We wanna be the easy part in the equation of cancer.

You know, they fill out a simple application, we do a background check, families get here, and then they become part of this community.

And they're from all over the United States, all walks of life.

Here at Nick's House, we have all the comforts of home.

There is, you know, laundry facilities, there's an office.

Any need that a patient would have or a family member would have, a caregiver would have, would be met.

The kitchen is a place where everybody congregates.

They're always, you know, together in the kitchen.

That island is used more than anything else in the house.

On each floor, there's areas where they can relax, unwind.

The dining room is an area where everybody, they eat together, right, and they talk about their day.

In the lower level, we do have the fitness area.

Caregivers need to stay strong.

It kinda helps with just the emotion.

Our comfort kits started where we were in the hospitals a lot and we would hear like, (gasps) "I got admitted and I don't have a toothbrush."

The cabinets are stocked, we provide everything.

We are, you know, patient services, a patient advocacy group at the end of the day.

We provide a very personalized approach.

Everybody that's involved in the HEADstrong Foundation has been touched by cancer, and we become part of their family.

We are their support system when they come here to Philadelphia.

- I found the HEADstrong Foundation about eight years ago as I was sitting in a hospital bed going through cancer treatment myself.

I really felt the need to be able to help people and from a different perspective because I really benefited from the support of patients.

- It's a labor of love, and we want people to feel that they're very welcomed and that this is their home.

We are the bridge to access the best cancer care and the affordability to do so because this is offered free of charge.

We've touched almost 31,000 patients, and that's not easy, but it's been the greatest privilege of my life.

(air whooshes) (lighthearted music) - We have anything from walkers, crutches, canes, wheelchairs, shower chairs, scooters, power wheelchairs available most of the time.

We loan out just about any kind of medical equipment that people in the community need at no charge.

I'm Robert Yeatman.

I've run this Hospital Equipment Program for over 30 years.

Back then, we only got maybe one or two calls a week.

Now it has evolved to, I get four or five calls every day.

- [Shirley] The Avon Grove Lions Club Hospital Equipment Program is run out of this barn, on Bob Yeatman's mushroom farm in West Grove, PA.

It's where he accepts medical equipment families no longer need, fixes it up, and loans it out as needed.

- [Robert] I'm the kind of person that has to do something, and I enjoy this.

(soft music) - [Shirley] Joyce Baughn and husband Juan drove out from Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania, to pick up a knee scooter for his sister.

- I think it's a fantastic program, and I was surprised to find out about it.

And because I'm finding that insurance doesn't always pay for these equipment that's needed.

- And the equipment looks new, so it's not like...

It's just terrific, it's terrific.

It's a fantastic opportunity for the community.

Good for the Lions Club.

- [Robert] There's definitely a need for this program.

People that come in, just, they are so appreciative of this program that they just can't express themselves enough.

- The WOW Center in Merchantville, New Jersey, serves as a beacon of light for women who have overcome obstacles.

Their various programs support and uplift women so they can thrive.

(gentle music) - WOW stands for your reaction to listening to a woman's testimony.

The mission of the WOW Center is empowering real women with real stories to thrive, dream, believe, and pursue the impossible through love and community.

(uplifting music) The WOW Center was built on a dream, (chuckles) and it still is, and that we are here to serve women at large.

They are people with a story and their stories matter.

When you step foot into this center, whether it's for a service, a program, or an event or activity, that we love you, we're here for you.

And we may not have that resource here, but we'll make sure that we provide you with a resource and that we're not going anywhere.

We are a faith-based organization, so everything that we do here comes from that place.

We're here to just walk alongside you.

Here we serve women through different programs, events, and services.

We do craft events for our seniors.

We have Project Healthy Bones for them too, which is for seniors who are struggling or at risk of struggling with osteoporosis.

- For me, being a part of the WOW Center now, like, it's really, like, a safe place where you can build your community and there's so much love.

I only give an intro at the beginning and then everyone goes off and they're all seated at tables in groups.

So really they spend the whole time, like, just talking with each other, working through the craft.

Everyone's able to build community and relate to people and tell their stories, which is great.

(bright music) - It's just been a really, really nice place to meet up with people.

And I love doing crafts, I find it very relaxing.

They're very, very welcoming here and just very hospitable.

- It's nice because everybody have something to say different and we learn from each other.

- We also do cooking classes with the Food Bank of South Jersey.

We also have an entrepreneurship cohort.

So that cohort goes for about 16 weeks and where we empower entrepreneurs to just kinda test their ideas out and see if they're valid and they work and can turn into a business, or just to progress their businesses along the way.

We also have fitness classes here for women.

We also do reentry services.

So we are grant funded through the Department of Corrections.

We have a food pantry, so we're a partner agency with the Food Bank of South Jersey.

(gentle music) We also have a clothing boutique where we serve women that are looking to go back to work.

So for interviews, for different types of employment, or just women that wholeheartedly are leaving situations that they have nothing with them, and so they need clothing.

We also do job development for a lot of our survivors or just our reentry community, helping them get back into the workforce, revising their resume, looking for work, how to dress for an interview, how to prepare for an interview, things of that nature.

- Every woman that walk in here, they will find whatever they need when they go back to work or they are applying for a job.

The main purpose is for every woman that walks in here feel love, feel empowered, feel that they are gonna be able to go back to the society just presentable.

They feel beautiful and loved.

They will find here love, peace, and everything that they need.

- [Melissa] Everything that we do is free to the public.

I will say, I'm a dreamer.

I dream big.

This is just the beginning.

This will be one of many buildings.

I wholeheartedly believe that the WOW Center, if not across the state of New Jersey, also across the state, many states, so, and internationally one day.

(uplifting music) - Now to a Camden program that's helping foster community and improve literacy.

It's called the Free Books Project.

- Free books.

Get 'em while they're hot!

(upbeat music) - Hey, how are you?

- Hey, how are you?

- Good.

The Free Books Project has been around for about five years.

Just with books that I gathered from friends, we put those books on the table and just offered them to people for free.

People took the books, engaged us in conversation, and really liked it.

And right away, I was hooked.

It was like, this is what I wanna do.

Books are free.

You've been here before.

How are ya?

- [Shirley] Three times a week.

Tom Martin sets up a table with books that are free for the taking.

The founder of the Free Books Project calls it a pop-up library.

On this day, he's outside this transportation center in Camden.

- We wanna get books in the hands of people who can't afford books, who can't make their way to a library.

Maybe they don't have a library card, maybe they don't have time to go to the library.

- Can I take these two?

- Yeah, take as many as you'd like.

- Okay.

- [Shirley] But setting up for two hours at a time three times a week wasn't enough for Tom.

With a friend's help, Tom developed a book ark so folks can access books 24/7.

- We have 75 of those in Camden.

We would love for the city of Camden to be called the City of Readers, because we now figure that nobody has to travel more than 10 blocks to access a book ark, where they can take books 24/7 for free.

There's no reason not to have them in every city.

We didn't patent the design.

I'll send the design to anybody.

What are you reading now?

- That one.

- Nice.

Where'd you get it?

You get it from a book ark?

- I got it from here.

- Oh, nice.

(bright music) - [Shirley] This Quaker Meeting House in Camden is home to the Free Books Place, an expansion of the Free Books Project.

This supersized pop-up library is open every Saturday - [Tom] People give away clothes, which is spectacular.

People give away food, which is needed.

But after food and clothing, people also need something for their mind, and the books hit that note.

And it's not just for their mind.

I mean, books are good for your soul too.

I do this for the people, but I also do it for me.

If I didn't get the feedback that I get, I wouldn't be doing this.

So it's a selfish venture, but I'm lucky that what makes me happy also supports the community.

- As a pioneer in animal welfare, the Morris Animal Refuge is committed to finding positive outcomes for animals in need.

(dog barks) - Our sole focus is on saving lives of every animal that we can.

We're founded in 1874 as a lifesaving organization, and our mission is to provide high-quality care, education, and adoption, with the goal of finding positive and humane outcomes for every animal in need.

(dogs barking) When we call ourselves an animal refuge, we talk about multiple species.

We typically, you know, we're about 65% cats, we're about 30% dogs, and 5%, if you name it, (laughs) we've seen it.

So we've had, you know, hamsters, chinchillas, ferrets.

We've had lizards, we've had turtles, we've had parakeets, we've had African gray parrots.

We've even gotten a call to rescue an alligator.

You can't come out yet, okay, buddy.

There are, you know, 50 animals in the shelter.

There may be 25 to 35 animals in foster care.

And once we get them tuned up, so they all get a medical exam, they get their vaccinations, they get spayed and neutered if they need to be spayed or neutered, they get, you know, rabies vaccine, and they get chipped, you know, then the adoption process starts when they're ready to go.

And that sometimes, depending if it's a kitten or a puppy, that takes a really short time.

If it's an older senior cat or an older senior dog, it may take, you know, three, four, five, 10 weeks.

What I always love about this job, you're saving the lives of, you know, four-legged animals.

With every one you save, there's a good chance you're saving a human just from a companion standpoint, whether it's loneliness or isolation or just, you know, a best friend.

(dog barking) - And that's our show.

I hope you've learned more about the vast resources available in our area.

Have a good night, everybody.

(upbeat music)