Somewhere in Gainesville, there is a child too hungry to pay attention to the teacher standing in the front of the classroom.
His tummy is rumbling and his throat is dry. His eyes are fixed, but he isn’t listening. He can’t seem to erase the big potato chip on the canvas of his imagination.
His mother works 40 hours a week and he doesn’t see his dad too often. Mommy doesn’t always have time to pack a lunch. They don’t always have food.
He sees the other kids with their lunchboxes and considers the unimaginable: steal or starve.
Gainesville humanitarian Dennis “DiscoDen” Franklin said he believes there are more than 300 children just like the one he described, in Gainesville and the surrounding region, fighting for survival.
These children continually motivate him to keep managing the Neighborhood Project, a one-man community restoration project built to make a difference in the lives of local families and individuals.
Franklin is looking for undergraduate and graduate student volunteers, graphic designers, student organizations and anyone with compassion who can help him operate and build on the programs within the Neighborhood Project.
Volunteers are invited to stop by the project’s headquarters at The Bazaar, 1620 SE Hawthorne Road. It’s open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday.
With volunteer help, Franklin said he could spend more time communicating with major sponsors in order to finance programs for the Neighborhood Project.
Current sponsors include Best Buy Co. Inc., Walgreen Co., PepsiCo Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Big Lots and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mid-Florida, of which Franklin is a board member.
“These people need help,” he said. “White, black, old or young, they all need help.”
Franklin’s objective is to raise people’s attitudes from pessimism to hope.
He said people constantly focus on what they don’t have or that they are living from paycheck to paycheck. They complain about how unemployment is about to run out, among other things.
Franklin said he is looking for a change in mentality. He hopes to provide all the resources necessary to do so.
“There is too much gimmie-gimmie in society,” he said. “You can’t depend on the government forever. At some point, you’re going to have to get up and make things happen on your own. That is what I want to get to people.”
Included in the Neighborhood Project is HOUSING4FAMILIES, a program for helping very low-income families, the elderly, veterans and the disabled to afford decent, safe and sanitary housing in the private market, said Bruce Wilson, customer relations specialist at The Bazaar.
The project offers a job training and employment program that trains individuals for employment and places them in livable-wage jobs, he said.
Also featured are financial literacy workshops, talent searches, health and fitness training, an after-school program, a mentoring program and a neighborhood food bank.
“We are all slaves to habits. Peoples’ minds need to be reprogrammed,” he said. “If we are slaves to habits, why not teach people to be slaves to good habits?”
The food bank operates out of The Bazaar. The bank strives to ensure that individuals’ and families’ basic needs are met with fresh meats, fish, fruits and vegetables, Wilson said.
Franklin said he has seen a variety of demographics visit the food bank. He said the group that frequents the bank the most has been “the poor middle-class resident.”
These people reside mostly in low socioeconomic neighborhoods, have housing and jobs, but are still barely making enough to support themselves and their families, he said.
The food bank has served more than 2,600 residents in the last two months, Franklin said. Some have been recent college graduates having a hard time getting a job.
“I want to show people how to be successful. It’s a step-by-step procedure,” Franklin said. “The more you help others, the more you help yourself.”
