Reducing hunger for LA’s homeless
ON his birthday last spring, Fil-Am community leader Errol Santos made a vow. He promised to reduce hunger in the homeless community of Los Angeles by giving away food. He hoped that by setting an example, he would be able to awake the people of Los Angeles to ameliorate the plight of many homeless people on the street. Santos believed that if he could put a spotlight on this social inequity, he might be able to convince the corporate citizens of this city to pitch in.
During his first sortie in April, Santos was able to convince a Fil-Am-owned bakery in Silverlake to contribute bread and cookies to his program. Those, together with several packages of hot Filipino foods from another Filipino-owned restaurant in Historic Filipinotown, constituted the bulk of the food packages that Errol and two of his friends handed out to random homeless people that his small group encountered on the sidewalks of Temple St, Sunset Bl., Beverly Bl., and at McArthur Park, in the Westlake district of Los Angeles.
Emboldened by a feeling of satisfaction from his first hunger-abatement program in April, Errol hit the streets again last Thanksgiving Day. As usual, Santos got the support of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center where he is the business development consultant.
Santos has been a longtime resident of Los Angeles, and during all those years, he had been known for having a deep compassion for the indigent. He has a regular feeding program at Hollywood Presbyterian for Filipino veterans to World War II and their spouses. So it was a natural progression for Santos to expand his free feeding program to the homeless in the areas that are being served by Hollywood Presby, including East Hollywood, Silverlake, Echo Park, Historic Filipinotown, and the Westlake District of Los Angeles.
He often asks himself a nagging question why homelessness and hunger are rampant in Los Angeles, one of the richest cities in the world. He believes, in his own way, that he could make a difference by extending his hand, using his own resources. But he is also hopeful that by his own example, he could awake the social consciousness of Corporate America to pick up from where he had started and embark on a wider, better-funded program to reduce hunger in LA’s homeless population. By his estimates, there are around 300 homeless persons in these districts, and his meager effort would not be enough to provide for all of them. That is why he is hoping that the city government and the corporate citizens of this city would notice his program and pitch in.
Santos considers himself lucky for having a good, nice-paying job, thriving businesses, and a family that solidly supports his projects. He is also very thankful for the support of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and its new Senior Vice President Deborah Ettinger, without which, his free feeding projects would have stopped a long time ago.
( Published December 19, 2009 in Asian Journal Los Angeles p. C6 )
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