Janis Baron was not in search of a new way to help the needy.
It was not her intention 18 years ago to found a non profit that helps hundreds of low-income South Bay families each week.
All Janis wanted to do was teach her kids a lesson.
No, creating Sunday Friends was not Janis' goal, but it is what happened.
Janis is the founder, and now board member, of Sunday Friends, a weekly program in which low-income families earn currency to buy daily necessities, all the while learning skills to help them be more self-reliant.
It all began in 1997 when Janis took her three, teenage children to a nearby homeless shelter. A life-long volunteer, Janis wanted her children to experience the satisfaction that comes with helping those less fortunate than themselves.
Local
WATCH MORE BAY AREA PROUD STORIES
It just didn't work out that well to start.
"We found a lot of disaffected children," Janis says.
Because of that, Janis says she and her children found it difficult to engage the children at the shelter in games and craft projects. It wasn't until a later trip, when Janis looked around the trash-strewn property, that she got an idea.
"I turned to the child next to me and said, 'I'll give you a sticker for every ten pieces of trash you pick up and put in this trash can,'" Janis recalls. She says ten other children immediately ran up to her. They asked home many pieces of trash they would have to pick up to earn a whole sheet of stickers.
In that moment, the basis for Sunday Friends was formed.
Sunday Friends has grown tremendously since then (it no longer operates in homeless shelters, but in three, San Jose schools), but the core concept, minus the stickers, remains the same: low incomes families earn tickets through self-improvement, and community building exercises. The tickets are then redeemable at the end of the day for basic necessities, and a few luxuries, at a special Sunday Friends store.
Janis says the Sunday Friends model has succeeded over the years because it is a charity that doesn't give charity. "It's a combination of learning and service woven together," Janis says.
The end result is that clients feel better about themselves for earning what the receive rather than simply being given something. In the process, they learn about parenting, health, and finance: all skills that help them become more self-reliant and, hopefully, one day not a family who needs Sunday Friends' services.
"I hope that one day we close because we are no longer needed," say Ali Barekat, Sunday Friends Executive Director. A former technology executive with 25 years experience, Ali took over at Sunday Friends 3 years ago after seeing the effect the program had on his son, a volunteer.
Since joining Sunday Friends, Ali says, the budget has grown five-fold, to $1 million a year. He says Sunday Friends is poised to grow even more in the future, "If it works in this community, there is no reason it won't work in others."
