Check out a booklet we produced in 2005 to celebrate our 25th Anniversary (pdf format)!

Watch a 12-minute video about Sisters, The Invisible Community. Please note you will need Quicktime or other video software to view this video.  To download a free version of QuickTime, click here.

Sisters’ Cofounder Wins National Caring Award

Given by The Caring Institute, the award honors the ten most caring men and women and five most caring young people in America as selected by a prestigious panel of judges each year. Click here to learn more about how Sisters’ Cofounder Genny Nelson won this prestigious national award in 2005.

History

Sisters was founded in 1979 by Genny Nelson and Sandy Gooch, two social service workers in the Burnside area.

Genny and Sandy were paid from a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) grant to work at Burnside Projects, which housed “Boxcar Bertha’s.” Working with the women who came through the center, Nelson and Gooch learned a lot about the community.  They learned, primarily, that women didn’t feel safe in a neighborhood like Old Town, a neighborhood not set up to address their needs, where many residents did not believe women belonged, in a city in which they felt invisible, and in a fundamentally sexist culture.

They learned that virtually every woman who passed through Boxcar Bertha’s had first-hand experience with violence: they had been raped, molested, harassed or physically threatened.  They felt no place was completely safe – not the shelters, not the streets, not even the restrooms.

Out of that experience, Nelson and Gooch determined to create one public place in the Burnside neighborhood that would assure safety to all. 

Of all Nelson’s experiences in Old Town, one stands out as the single catalyst leading to creation of Sisters Of The Road Café:

One morning, she stood in line with Burnside residents waiting for a meal in a local soup kitchen.  The morning was cold, the wait was long.  Once inside, the sermon was lethally boring and irrelevant to many listeners.  And the breakfast was old ice cream.

Here’s how Genny Nelson described it:

“I walked through the mission door with Bill and we sat on an empty church pew.  I saw a lot of familiar faces but not much visible praying.  Folks were talking and sleeping and reading newspapers when suddenly we were all asked, “Who hasn’t had coffee?”

“Bill cried:  ‘Raise your hand and be counted.’ For giving ‘thanks’ you get free coffee.  So we all moved to the front of the room, past the altar and the Jesus tattooed on a rug.  We were shown our seats and asked to wait before we ate, because the preacher was getting ready to speak.  I was humbled and embarrassed as he quoted from the Bible because everyone here is accustomed to this “old time” routine, but for coffee and ice cream at seven in the morning it was really hard to believe.  We all sat at the tables with this AM relief and what followed went kind of like this:

“Bob said he thought it tasted like sand, Fred (who rarely speaks) mentioned he couldn’t tell the flavor, the mission staff hollered it was strawberry, and the preacher just said it won’t hurt you.”

For many Burnside neighborhood residents, breakfast was a sermon a la mode at the mission – or nothing.  To Genny Nelson and Sandy Gooch, these were not acceptable alternatives.

Nelson and Gooch believed that individuals need and deserve healthy, wholesome food.  They were committed to the idea that people deserve the opportunity to obtain a meal with dignity, rather than with shame.

Nelson and Gooch undertook 100s of hours of interviews with people experiencing homelessness, asking “what is needed?” The response, “a place where we can dine with dignity and work for a meal if we don’t have money.” If the people would’ve said, “we need a laundromat” – that is what we would have built.

All of Sisters’ programs are customer-driven solutions to the calamities of homelessness and poverty.  Everything we do comes from what the customers say is needed.

The founders of Sisters Of The Road Café conceived of a restaurant where wholesome meals would be affordable to very low-income people, and where those who lacked the price of a meal could trade work for food.  Even those with no training or education would be able to work for the price of a meal.

The ongoing experiment in community building known as Sisters Of The Road Cafe began on November 7, 1979 with three goals which remain unchanged:

1. The creation of a safe and welcoming environment to neighborhood residents, especially women and children, where
2. nourishing meals would be served at little cost or in exchange for work and
3. job training and employment experience would be available.

Early on, our customers told us job training would really help change their daily lives.  In response we started the Work-Force Development program which has helped hundreds of individuals to return to employment and end their homelessness since Sisters’ beginning.

The Café was anonymously marked shortly after opening with a circle containing three Xs---the hobo symbol for good food and hospitality---was chalked on the pavement outside the restaurant door. This symbol became Sisters’ logo. Sisters’ staff, volunteers and customers have been creating community for more than two decades by building long term, stable and mutually supportive relationships.

In the 1980s our customers explained to us that using their food stamps in Sisters would greatly assist them as they cannot cook the food they can purchase with food stamps at the store without a kitchen.  Sisters listened and helped to pass federal legislation that allows people who are experiencing homelessness to use their food stamps to purchase meals in designated restaurants. 

In 2003 we changed our name from Sisters Of The Road Café to Sisters Of The Road to honor the vital work that happens at Sisters outside of the Café.  The Café work, Hot Meals and Barter Program, remains integral to all we do.

Sisters continues to be customer driven solutions to the calamities of hunger and homelessness in our community.