Maybe I Can with Debbie Weiss

Ep. 113: From Loss to Leadership: Karen Olson’s Mission

• Debbie Weiss

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In this episode, I sit down with Karen Olson, founder and CEO Emeritus of Family Promise, whose personal journey of loss and resilience sparked a nationwide movement to combat family homelessness. Karen shares how her experiences—losing her mother at a young age and encountering individuals experiencing homelessness—shaped her empathy and purpose.

We discuss the challenges of addressing family homelessness, why community action and policy reform are essential, and how Karen built a grassroots outreach into a national organization that has helped millions. Even after a life-changing accident left her in a wheelchair, Karen continues to inspire with her determination, reminding us all that compassion and kindness can create extraordinary change.

Debbie Weiss
 https://www.debbierweiss.com
 https://www.facebook.com/groups/maybeican
 https://www.instagram.com/debbie.r.weiss
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNi8Frz-SsR9Mv_h0CNjB9w
 https://www.tiktok.com/@debbierweiss
 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/maybe-i-can-with-debbie-weiss/id1676123222

Karen Olson
 https://familypromise.org/

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Maybe I Can, exploring possibilities one sprinkle at a time. If you've ever found yourself asking is this all there is to life, then you're in the right place. I'm Debbie author, speaker, entrepreneur and coach, and every Tuesday I'm here to share a sprinkle of hope and inspiration. Together, we'll uncover the more More joy, more fulfillment, more prosperity, more fun. We'll share stories of transformation, actionable tips and that little nudge you need to take the next step. So let's embark on this journey of discovery and say maybe I can to a life filled with more, ready to find out. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

The Maybe I Can Show starts now. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Maybe I Can Podcast. I'm your host, debbie Weiss, and thank you so much for tuning in today. And, before I forget, I have to thank those of you who reached out to me, particularly after my last episode where I kind of asked is anybody out there? And I got a lot of responses that really made me realize that you are out there, and so thank you so much for listening, because I know there are so many choices of shows and not nearly enough time. So let's get into today's episode, because I am very excited and feel very honored and privileged today to have my incomparable guest with me.

Speaker 1:

My guest today is Karen Olson. She's the founder and CEO emeritus of Family Promise. She's dedicated her life to transforming the present and future of homelessness and low income families. Karen has rallied more than a million volunteers nationwide, fostering an extensive network of support for the vulnerable. Also, because of all the efforts of the volunteers, the organization has been able to assist over a million people experiencing homelessness. Karen's efforts have been duly recognized, including the prestigious annual Points of Light Award from President George HW Bush and the New Jersey Governor's Pride Award. The American Institute of Public Service also bestowed upon her the Jefferson Award, acknowledging her tireless public service efforts. Karen, welcome to the. Maybe I Can podcast.

Speaker 2:

Debbie, it's a pleasure to be here with you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. So I'm going to ask you the same question that I start off and ask all of my amazing guests, and I know that you probably have a variety of answers available to you, so whichever one pops up works for us. Can you tell us about a time when you went from a defeated I can't attitude to a more empowered? Maybe I can mindset yes.

Speaker 2:

Growing up, I always wanted to do something to help people and my father. I lost my mother when I was just 12. That created a lot of pain in my life and I, because of that, I think I became more empathetic and I wanted to help people and I was a candy striper in a hospital and I was president of the Future Nurses Club in high school. I so wanted to help people in that way. That was my dream. I even knew what nursing school I wanted to go to St Luke's Nursing School in New York. So all my energy and my thoughts in high school were to become a nurse. I got I was a fair student, but I got an A in biology, an A in chemistry, because they were prerequisite for nursing school. But my stepmother, who was a nurse, said to me Karen, I was a nurse and you don't have what it takes to become a nurse. And she told my father that and persuaded him not to send me to nursing school, that it would be a waste of money. So just like that, my dream was shattered and I thought there's no way out of this. And so I studied business administration and I later became a consumer promotions manager for the Warner Lambert Company and I ended up creating coupon and sweepstakes events for products like Schick razors and Listerman mouthwash. You know that was a far cry from offering comfort to people who needed it, but nevertheless I enjoyed what I was doing. I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed the competitive nature of the job, I enjoyed the creativity. But I still long for something in my life. I long for something more. I felt like, you know, I was meant for something more because of my experience.

Speaker 2:

And one day fate intervened for me. I was on my way to a meeting in New York City and it was a time when, well, still is true today that homeless people were all over New York City, huddled in doorways, lying on the street, and I always pass them by. Probably. I pass them by because my grandmother, years ago, said people like that want to be that way. Sometimes you even have thousands of dollars tucked in their bag. I was just 12 after my mother died and she said you know, she tugged at my hand and made me go faster by people that we saw on the street.

Speaker 2:

But this day fate intervened because I was about to pass a homeless woman who I had seen before. She sat on a crate outside of Grand Central Station. Her head was always bowed down. She looked so depressed and I could identify with depression because I had depression in my 20s, but I also had a desire to help people. So I found myself running across the street and getting her ham and cheese sandwich and an orange juice and when I came back she said thank you, god bless you. I haven't eaten since yesterday.

Speaker 2:

This is the first time I ever talked to a homeless person and we talked for a little bit. I learned about her life. She had been married, she had two sons, one had five and the other one was on the West Coast and her building was. She was evicted but her building had to be remodeled for condominiums and one thing after another. Sometimes she stayed in a shelter, but they were dangerous and you know, she just had nowhere to stay except grand central station and um. So I gave her the sandwich and the orange juice, you know, and she said thank you, god bless you. I mean since yesterday. And she reached up her hand to mine and I took her rough, callous hand in my hand and there was such a spark of warmth and at that point I knew I had crossed an invisible line and it was really beautiful. So there's more in this story, but maybe I should stop here.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, yes, so so much. I want to start, though, with that. Your early life and losing your mother at 12, especially, you know, a girl at that time of your life, just entering those teenage years I I just can't even imagine. But talk a little more about that. And then where did your stepmother come into the picture? And I don't want to say, was she always so cruel? But how did that affect your life?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, the shock and tragedy about my mother's death was that she committed suicide, and so I left for school that morning and gave her a hug and a kiss, as we always would.

Speaker 2:

And my mother was my best friend and you know, two days later she died and that was just horrifying. I had a younger sister who was two years old at the time. Um, and you know I I was alone. I felt sad. There was no grief, support or counseling as there is today. In fact my mother didn't even get any support for her depression and it was just really horrifying. So much so that at night my father's friend had given me a stuffed furry toy cat. It had a rubbery smiley face on it and I would hold that. He was my little friend and every single night and uh, soon, his rubbery smiley face was totally washed away by my tears. Um, I went back to school and it was something he just didn't talk about. You know, nobody was like school as usual and so nobody talked about that then. So I didn't have a lot of support, except for my grandmother, and that was a lifeline to me because that was my mother's mother and I would go into New York regularly to see her, and that was good. But the silver lining in all this was it made me more empathetic and compassionate and compassionate, and from meeting Millie to then I shared that with my boys. They said let's go into New York and find more people like Millie. So we did.

Speaker 2:

We ended up eventually going to Port Authority and there you know anybody sitting on a bus on a Sunday night. That's when we went in with the sandwiches. They weren't waiting for their bus, they were just homeless. And we got to know them by name and we had some of the ones that we knew well. Back to my house for Thanksgiving dinner and there I realized that I was really operating more for my soul and my spirit than me, karen, my ego, because you have to be that way to be in a suburban community and to go to the bus station summit and welcome homeless people into your house for Thanksgiving dinner. Welcome homeless people into your house for Thanksgiving dinner. But you know, the neighbors helped out and prepared dishes and so on, because I wasn't a very good cook and in fact I had never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner in my whole life. So it was really, really, really beautiful and it was really, really, really beautiful.

Speaker 2:

So that led me to looking for who was homeless in Union County, new Jersey, and I found that families were the fastest growing segment of the homeless population and that the number one reason kids were taken from their parents' inflation. Foster care was because they couldn't put a roof over the cost of homelessness, and I thought that was horrifying and I wondered if the religious community knew this and if they did what they want to help. It was always more spiritual and religious for me. I found God sitting on a rock in the woods with a stream going by in front of me and praying. That's where I felt closest In the 50s.

Speaker 2:

You know, I belong to the Presbyterian church, but it seemed very formal to me, with everybody wearing white gloves. There was no outreach to people, but that's how it was in the 50s. But for me, I desperately wanted to help people, and so that led me to bringing awareness of homelessness to the religious community, specifically to the religious community, because no matter what faith, we all had something we could agree upon, which was to help those who were underserved and underprivileged people. And so I ran a conference on family homelessness and 200 people from the religious communities came to hear about homelessness and hear from Wendy, a mother who was homeless and made to walk every day from the shelter she stayed at when she was pregnant and as a result she gave birth prematurely. And so that really opened people's eyes, and from there I began meeting with folks, some of them from the conference, and we looked for a building. That was the obvious. We wanted a building for shelter, but nowhere could we find a building. The armory wouldn't provide space and nobody wanted a shelter in the backyard and not one church or synagogue could provide for a full-time shelter. So I came up with a plan which was to involve a number of religious congregations in sharing responsibility for providing shelter and support for families shelter and support for families. And so the plan was 12 religious congregations in each wood shelter for one week at a time, in rotation with the others. So that meant they would do this, um about what, once a quarter, and they would do it, uh, just in the evening.

Speaker 2:

Families would arrive by bus, uh, from the day Center and the day Center because Y and Elizabeth, where they used as a home base for families. They arrived by bus and the volunteers would have cooked the meal, welcomed them, served the meal and dined with the families. It was really a family environment. Volunteers would come and help out and dine with the families. They would sometimes bring their own children when they volunteered and you know, there's nothing like children playing with children and so they didn't recognize that these children volunteers' children didn't recognize that the guest children were homeless. They just got down to the business of the play. In fact I can remember one time the mother came and volunteered with her her eight-year-old and, um, the kids got down and just played ball and so on. He had a wonderful time when she left with her mother because her mother had told her we're going to go see the homeless. She said to her mother when are we going to see the homeless? When are we going to see the homeless? She didn't even realize that she'd been playing with homeless children for the last couple of hours. That's the beauty of children and that's something we can learn from. They have such an open heart, you know, and they don't judge and you know, have to be taught do this, don't do that. So it's a lovely benefit. And that program grew. The success of Family Promise grew and the nearby county union I mean not union um morris and essex county said to me how do we start this program? So I work with them and they opened their programs with great success. And then more people came to me and so that's when I formed a national organization.

Speaker 2:

If someone said to me years ago, you know, after my dream of becoming a nurse was shattered. Well, karen, don't worry, you're going to go on to help millions. I never would have believed them or I said, oh no, I can't, I don't have the background that. But sometimes if you reach out in a small way, like I did with Millie, and give a sandwich, then you know the next act of kindness, the next it grows. It doesn't mean you have to form a national organization, like I did, but the gift of compassion presents ripple effects and it's just very, very killing.

Speaker 2:

One act of kindness you give, whether you're in the line of going through, of paying your toll on the highway, and you take the person's toll behind you, and they're amazed when they get to pay their toll, oh, car had. They don't even know me. They did this, you know it leaves an impression. So I really, really believe in that. Today we've helped over a million million people and more than a million volunteers have been involved in our close to 200 affiliates across the country. So that's nothing I could have expected, but I believe God's hand was in this all the way and roadblocks were removed, but I had many, many roadblocks roadblocks were removed, but I had many, many roadblocks um and um.

Speaker 1:

I I find it interesting that on that day, after being told you know, by your grandmother that you know we don't talk to those people and and I was told something similar and felt the same way and maybe they're people to be afraid of, or, uh, they're going to take your money and they're going to drop by alcohol and and all these things, these myths that on that particular day, something, something moved you and and I, I just I love that and I think that the idea sometimes you just have to follow your gut and you just never know where it's going to lead you to.

Speaker 2:

That's true. Yeah, the homeless man who was on my grandmother's street was hunched over with paper bags filled with whatever his possessions and he would take. He was also mentally ill. He would take um 12 steps and then turn around and face saint john the divine with his hands raised in prayer. Um, because saint john the divine at the cathedral was right at the end of my grandmother's block, would take 12 steps, put his back down and pray to St John the Divine and turn around and take 12 more steps. So we had this repetitive nature. And that's when I said Gaga, that's what I call my grandmother, let's get him some gloves or let's buy him something to eat. And that's when she chucked at my hand and said no, don't, you can't go near people like that. You know they're sometimes crazy or dangerous and, besides, some of them want to be that way. They might have hundreds of dollars tucked in their back. So soon it became much easier to walk by that man, as my natural compassion turned to, you know, fear. And it just became much easier.

Speaker 1:

So that's the process, um and I think that your open heart huh yeah, I think yours, that process is, is uh, not unique, right that so many of us are taught this? Talk about the uniqueness of family, homelessness versus the individual.

Speaker 2:

Well, most people think the homeless are those that are lying on the street or talking to themselves and so on, but 35% of all homeless people are actually members of families, and you say, well, I don't see families on the street corner or huddled together. No, you don't, because they're either in a shelter, living in their car. Quite frequently, many people come to us having lived in their car, or they're doubled or tripled up with friends, but they don't have any stable home, and so the root cause is the lack of affordable housing coupled with low incomes, because if people had housing, they wouldn't be on the street for the most part, and so that's the root cause. But there are many precipitating causes to homelessness, especially family homelessness, loss of income, loss of a job, divorce all kinds of precipitating causes that can land a family homeless. So the root cause is the lack of affordable housing. Today, for every four people searching for affordable housing, only one person gets that housing, and that showed you a little bit about the crisis.

Speaker 2:

So that's a root cause, and there are many nonprofits, like Habitat for Humanity, that build affordable housing, and that's certainly the answer, but there's just not enough. The answer will come when we have a partnership between the nonprofit private sector and government and we look to government to have policies that will lift people out of poverty and end the systemic issues that cause people to become homeless. But I'm not, especially in these days beginning in January, I'm not waiting for government policies to change things. I don't. Sadly I don't see that happening. But people can work locally to help people find housing. They can relax some regulations at the local level and begin working locally, I believe. But right now, that's truly, truly the answer.

Speaker 1:

So I know that you've written a book called Meant for More. Can you give us a little background of what inspired you and what we can learn in that book?

Speaker 2:

Well, I was so touched by all the stories I was hearing from people, not just the volunteers but also the guests in our program, and I wanted to share that. You know, because I heard wonderful stories both from guests and from volunteers, like guests Hope Johnson, who had became blind overnight and they found out that she had caught a virus from her child and her child was in nursery school. But one morning Hope woke up blind and she didn't know what to do and she lost her license because she couldn't drive. And then if she couldn't drive she couldn't go to work at the diner where she was a waitress, and so she got behind in her rent and was evicted. And you know, two months before that she was a single mom and doing fine, but she had this horrific event and she became homeless.

Speaker 2:

After a while it did clear up but she had nowhere to go. So she came into family promise and she said family promise changed her life. The volunteers helped her and one couple even helped her um get, get a job at verizon and she's now a manager of the verizon store, and two other volunteers became godparents to her daughter, olivia. And the thing about Family Promise is that we did it to create shelter, but more than shelter, we created a healing environment where really love prevails. And for some of our guests they say you know, this has become more of my family than my actual family. You know, this has become more of my family than my actual family and that to me is a secret sauce of family promise. And we're still building new affiliates across the country and also gotten involved in homelessness prevention and intervention and we stay with families for up to two years after they get into housing, with some case management support. So it truly is a loving community.

Speaker 1:

That's amazing. How were you able? I've been involved in a variety of different volunteer organizations and especially nowadays it seems so difficult to find people to volunteer. How have you been able to create the organization basically run by volunteers?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I guess it began when I first started the volunteers came from. Let's look at Central Presbyterian Church as an example. The volunteers come from that church and we weren't asking them to go down to an urban area that they were unfamiliar with, which they might have a 30-minute drive. You're saying come back on the post. Week starts on Sunday.

Speaker 2:

You know, set up the beds, prepare, prepare a meal, stay, bring your own kids to volunteer. The issue is that we're able to volunteer right within their own congregation. I mean, I, on a fluke encounter, ate the sandwich to Mellie. That would not probably be for most people, but they had that opportunity to volunteer and get to know homeless families, and so it was the ease of volunteering in a familiar environment. It was an extension of their religious experience, whether it's a church, synagogue or mosque, and that's also the beauty of what was created. It's truly interfaith, and that's another thing that they you know. The synagogue became as branded, with a Presbyterian church across the street, and that led to more interfaith activities. So that was, that was just a lovely.

Speaker 1:

It certainly is, and I have to tell you that I have volunteered several times myself, and so when I was excited that I was going to have you as a guest on the show, I couldn't wait to personally tell you what an impact that volunteering did have on myself, on my family. My children came as well. Wonderful, yeah, it was truly a remarkable experience.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that, so I have to thank you for what you've given.

Speaker 1:

You know, of course, me personally that little bit, but what you've given to all of us, to the homeless community, to those that we've gotten to benefit by volunteering and, you know, to, really to the world, to the fact that you're inspiring everyone to see that if we open our hearts and open our minds and if we each just do a little bit, that we can truly change the world, because that's what you have done so thank you for that.

Speaker 2:

It's wonderful to hear, and then an extension of that is is my book meant for more? Following your heart and finding your purpose. It you know it shares some of my story about developing family promise, but it shares ways of how you can get involved and make a difference and the joy of volunteering.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful, and can you, karen, share with the audience where they can get your book?

Speaker 2:

Yes, they can get the book at Barnes Noble Amazon and they can go to my website at Karen Olson authorcom. That's Karen Olson O-L-S-O-N, but it's available through Amazon and also bookshopcom.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful. Well, we will make sure to put those links in our show notes so everyone can go out and get them. And, karen, thank you so much for being a guest on the Maybe I Can podcast and for just being an inspiration. Your life's work is truly amazing, so thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you and to everyone else I have to say, Karen, is my hashtag sprinkle of delight for today, tomorrow and the rest of the week. So get on social media and share your sprinkle of delight. I'll see everyone next week, bye-bye. Thanks for spending part of your day with me here on Maybe I Can, exploring possibilities one sprinkle at a time. It's been great having you and I hope you're leaving with a spark to light up your journey to more. Remember every big change starts with a single maybe. If you're ready to kickstart that change but not sure where to begin, I've got just the thing for you. Head over to download my free guide, the One Critical Step to Kickstart Change and take that all-important first step. Let's make those maybes into reality, one sprinkle at a time. Catch you next Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern, 1 pm Pacific, with more stories, tips and that extra push you might need. I'm Debbie saying goodbye for now, but always remember maybe, just maybe, you can.

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Debbie Weiss

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