Susan Prather Receives Jefferson Award for Community Service
by Lydia Gans
Susan Prather directs the Fresh Start program for homeless people living in Walnut Creek. Lydia Gans photo"I started to help people one at a time -- frail, elderly and homeless people and poor people -- and when I saw how they were treated, that's what radicalized me. It was the system."
When Susan Prather received the Jefferson Award last month, all the participants in her Fresh Start program at Walnut Creek celebrated. The Jefferson Award is given to a person for "making a difference in his or her community. "It's such an honor to receive," Prather said. But beyond the honor for her, the publicity around it will benefit the Fresh Start homeless program.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fresh Start in Walnut Creek offers homeless and poor people a place to relax, shower, wash clothes, have a meal, and get some of the basic supplies and services that most people take for granted.
Prather started the program eight years ago, motivated by seeing homeless, needy people on the streets of relatively affluent Walnut Creek. She recalls having become friends with a homeless man and learning over time how to be helpful to him -- "when to hold back, when to move forward and when to help him get to appointments."
Long before starting Fresh Start, Prather had been involved as an activist in protecting the human rights of homeless people in Contra Costa County, and in helping them find needed services.
As the years went by, she got more and more involved in "helping people one at a time." Eventually, she put together a proposal and got the City of Walnut Creek to support Fresh Start. City funding ran out six years ago and the program is now a nonprofit agency, "operating on the kindness of strangers," Prather says.
Receiving the Jefferson Award has brought attention and all sorts of offers of support for the program. "We've had incredible support," Prather said. "We've had new volunteers come," including a person who works with a veterinary service "who wants to put together a program for people who have animals on the street" to provide medical care for them.
After receiving the award, Prather said, "it really pleases me (to get) a lot of cards and letters from people who are so happy about it - my 30 years of troublemaking getting an award." She is proud of her reputation as a troublemaker on behalf of justice for poor people.
Asked what got her involved, she talks about her homeless friend. "What radicalized me was what I saw when I tried to help him," she said. "How people were treated. I started to help people one at a time -- frail, elderly and homeless people and poor people -- and when I saw how they were treated, that's what radicalized me. It was the system."
Fresh Start focuses on helping people one-on-one to get their basic needs filled, and provides space where they can spend some peaceful hours during the day to rest and socialize. For that, "you don't need a big bureaucracy," Prather maintains.
She would like to see Fresh Start established in other neighborhoods. It's a boon to participants and also to the community.
"The police department here says we've made great strides in lessening the impact of homelessness on the community," Prather said. "One thing is that we've cut down on petty theft because we provide what people need from day to day."
It seems ironic that people can be persuaded to help the poor when their property is threatened. And that one person with compassion and initiative can find a way to give society's outcasts a little comfort in their lives.
Prather said, "If there was a Fresh Start in every neighborhood in San Francisco it would make a large difference in how homelessness impacts the whole city."
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