OUR BACKYARD


Members of Loyola’s Labre ministry stop along Michigan Avenue to talk to a man experiencing homelessness during one of the group’s summer service outings. CAMPUS MINISTRY Taking it to the streets


For Loyola students, helping people who are homeless begins with a simple ‘hello’ • BY ALEXANDRA JONKER (’17)


On a recent summer evening, members of Labre, Loyola’s homeless outreach ministry, met in the chapel at the Terry Student Center for a brief reflection before heading out to Michigan Avenue. Amid the fast-paced shop- pers and towering buildings, a quiet man they stooped down to chat with could have easily


been missed—another fixture of the city to glance at. They stopped and asked if it would be OK to talk with him for a while, share some food, and see how his day was going. Such an ordinary exchange between a few people—a truly effort- less gesture—ended in a dispirited man’s genuine smile, the result of having someone to talk to after


a day of being ignored. The same narrative was repeated throughout the evening, as the group encountered men and women on the street in need of not only food, water, and housing but a friendly face amidst a sea of people walking by. “Labre understands itself as a ministry of pres-


ence,” says James Egan, a Loyola senior studying philosophy and one of Labre’s 15 student lead- ers. And eight years of ministry and four differ- ent routes around the Water Tower Campus have provided Labre with plenty of opportunities to


28 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO


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