From the ground up
Sam Giber and Patrick Alvarez grew up in different worlds.
Giber spent his youth in an affluent Massachusetts suburb. Alvarez moved from shelter to shelter in the Bronx and Brooklyn, homeless from 7 to 9 years old.
Despite where they came from, the undeclared freshmen in the College of Arts and Sciences are now neighbors on the fifth floor of Day Hall. Together they started Project Feed Me, a nonprofit organization aimed at raising money to feed families in impoverished areas of New York City.
Originally Alvarez’s idea, Project Feed Me became a joint effort with Giber after he listened to Alvarez talk at a floor meeting about his struggles as a homeless child.
Through fundraisers at Funk ‘n Waffles, T-shirt sales, and a grant provided by the Verizon Foundation, Alvarez and Giber have raised nearly $2,000 in their first few months at SU. This Thanksgiving, Alvarez and Giber hope to feed as many as 200 families in Harlem, having already met their previous goal of 100.
‘This is going to be a life-long pursuit,’ Alvarez said. ‘We can be the generation to end poverty.’
In partnership with the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Project Feed Me will host a basketball tournament 2 p.m. Sunday in Archbold Gymnasium to raise money for its Thanksgiving event. The fundraiser will also provide monetary support for the start of another company Alvarez is creating, called Project Teach Me.
Project Teach Me will use the revenue from similar fundraisers to give two $500 scholarships to high school seniors who plan to attend SU and whoíve dealt with serious economic hardships. The organizers will select one student from New York City and one from Syracuse.
Alvarez and Giber recently applied to establish Project Feed Me as an official, university-recognized student organization. Their application is still pending, but the group continues to grow.
The members of Project Feed Me, comprised of students from different races and economic backgrounds, are all freshmen. Currently there are more than 30 active members.
Giber said he also hopes to create his own side program called Project Heal Me, which would provide flu vaccinations for people staying in homeless shelters. The program would also help people without health insurance pay for medical bills.
Other group members of Project Feed Me, such as freshman finance and sociology major Nicole Sepulveda, are considering their own offshoot programs as well.
In Sepulveda’s program, Project Clothe Me, students will collect unwanted clothing and redistribute them to poor communities in Syracuse and New York City.
Like Giber, Sepulveda became interested in Alvarez’s mission after listening to him talk at a floor meeting.
‘He doesn’t flaunt his past, it doesn’t define who he is,’ she said. ‘I think it’s just a genuine caring for other people that makes him do it.’
Alvarez finds the ability to give back to those in the same position he was in almost 10 years ago to be fulfilling.
‘I remember watching my mom cry because she couldn’t feed me,’ Alvarez said. ‘The worst times were Thanksgiving, Christmas, everyone had these big meals on their tables, and we had nothing. It was that hard for us.’
Giber said Alvarez’s journey inspired him to help jumpstart Project Feed Me, an idea Alvarez had struggled with developing since January.
Giber added that a number of people from wealthy backgrounds are more concerned with keeping their money than giving it to others, and that Alvarez sometimes fails to understand that mentality.
But that’s why Giber has been so important to Project Feed Me, Alvarez said. As he describes it, Giber is the practical thinker, and Alvarez is the passionate visionary behind the company.
‘A business grows when you surround yourself with talented people,’ Alvarez said. Giber was impressed with Alvarez’s unwillingness to allow his past to overwhelm him, which drew him into Project Feed Me and into Alvarez’s life.
‘Pat’s transformed the issues in his life into change,’ Giber said. ‘To come from where he’s been, and to be able to do something with it– that’s unique, it’s special.’
After his father was arrested for domestic violence when Alvarez was six, he and his mother were driven from their home in the South Bronx to multiple shelters throughout New York City.
At that time, Alvarez’s mother was ‘paranoid’ that her husband would get out of jail, hunt her down, and hurt or kill her.
His mother spoke little English and had trouble finding work. As a result, they were forced to stay on the streets. For nearly two years, they struggled to find food and a place to sleep.
‘I never realized how important a blanket and pillow are until I got into the shelters,’ Alvarez said.
Alvarez almost failed first and second grade, but his family pushed him to stay in school. His mother got a job working with mentally-challenged children, and they were able to get an apartment in Brooklyn. An honor student in high school, Alvarez drove himself to excel in the classroom. He almost couldn’t afford SU and his mother started encouraging him to look at community colleges, but the nine scholarships he received enabled him to leave New York City.
That part of Alvarez’s life is over now, he said.
Alvarez said he needed to leave New York City in order to grow, but Giber notices problems Alvarez faces at SU, a university with a high population of wealthy students. ‘He doesn’t want to be judged as a ‘city kid,” Giber said. ‘He feels very separate from where he comes from.’
Giber’s own past, despite his wealthy upbringing, helps him understand why students can be so ‘quick to judge.’
‘I feel like there’s this attitude people have here. They can’t see beyond this small world and their own wants,’ Giber said. ‘This (project) puts you in tune with the rest of the world ó the one people can’t see but is right around the corner.’
Students from other schools, like Ashley Booker, a freshman African American studies and political science major at Bates College in Maine, have taken notice of Project Feed Me’s efforts. With Alvarezís help, Booker is starting Project Feed Me initiatives on her own campus.
‘A program like Project Feed Me is a program that many people would love to get involved in because it provides just enough help to someone else, especially with the economy that we are in right now,’ Booker said.
As Project Feed Me continues to gain support, Alvarez and Giber remain optimistic about the future of their program. Like Booker, they plan to see the effort go beyond the Hill and onto the national college scene.
‘I believe that this program can go national if the message of Project Feed Me reaches more colleges,’ Booker said.
Keith Smith, a freshman in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries who helped with the Funk ‘n Waffles fundraiser earlier in the semester, said he believes Alvarez’s passion will eventually extend the group’s scope to the national level.
Like many of the other members of Project Feed Me, Smith volunteers with the group every week and he also helped develop the group’s Web site, which launched Oct. 26. The time he has spent with Alvarez has taught Smith a lot about the potential within people to help one another.
‘He does it because he cares about people,’ Smith said. ‘He’s lived it- it’s real to him.’
Published on October 29, 2008 at 12:00 pm
