Narciso Muñoz, CFA, MS Political Sciences. President Hermanos de la Calle Foundation. Managing Director Alex Brown, a Division of Raymond James.

 

Perhaps the idea that best summarizes this monumental work developed by Juan Pablo Stegmann is the passage of the Good Samaritan, who helped a homeless, wounded and helpless man: it was neither the markets, nor the governments, but a man with a good heart.

For the past 5 years, with our families, friends and 500 volunteers, we helped the homeless of Miami, and along with them veterans, migrants, families, the elderly. We visited the streets where they are concentrated, supporting them with resources to improve their situation, recomposing their lives (health, work, finances, socialization and even spiritual support), trying to reunite them with their families, incorporating them into recovery programs, getting them permanent or transitional housing. Numerous donors and the state have supported us, providing 20 houses where the homeless can live, finding a community where they feel supported and regain their dignity.

"Hermanos de la Calle” brings together people who want to help, with those who need that help, helping to rehabilitate more than 100 homeless people in Miami per month, 30% of them children, and is expanding to other U.S. cities. Our task is to see the person, with his or her dignity, behind each homeless person, to help him or her transform and reintegrate into society.

As this book states, spirituality has been the driving force that led us to undertake this work; our spirituality is what makes us people, different from animals, it makes us brothers, it empowers us, it gives us that supernatural spark that we have and that we forget we have, or we do not dare to use it, or we were convinced that it is not there: but it is there. And when we use it, we impact many people, who begin to feel useful, unique and necessary. Our spirituality enhances and rediscovers that foggy mirror where we look for ourselves and sometimes, we do not see ourselves. Our spirituality brings us closer to God because we are made in his image and likeness, we have a little piece of God inside us.

I hope that many will read this book, so that it will help them to walk a path of personal and community growth, to discover the extraordinary value that spirituality has in our lives, to make us grow, be transformed, and to transform society in order to build a better world.

 

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