Social Work Club serves unhoused populations in Center City

The Philadelphia Campus Social Work Club hosts a bagged lunch event for unhoused populations in Center City Philadelphia each semester. Throughout the course of the semester, they collect donations to include in the bags, and this year they received enough donations to fill and distribute 35 bags with the help of volunteers.

"Housing insecurity continues to be an ongoing issue in Philadelphia, and for social workers, we are often working on the front lines of these kinds of societal issues," said Paul Heffner, DSW, LSW, assistant professor of social work. "This is the reason it is so important for our students to be involved in concrete actions in the community to offer support... it may offer someone nourishment in a moment, and show care to people in a time that they may really feel forgotten. This falls very much in line with social work values, and for students in our field, to be a part of that, it is incredibly significant."

The items collected for these bags included: winter hats and scarves, bottled water, granola bars, hand warmers, travel mugs, hot cocoa packets, tuna cracker packs, and resource information packets developed by Christina Joseph, a social work student who works with unhoused populations in Center City.

"The Philadelphia Campus Social Work Club is dedicated to assisting the unhoused in Center City Philadelphia," said Michelle Johnson, president of the Social Work Club. We want to be impactful in the area of keeping them warm and providing some sort of nourishment. We are hopeful that we will be able to do more for the next event."