Detroit — Eleventh-grader Coleman Ward and his fellow youth team members want Detroit’s homeless to “see there are still people here who care about them,” he said.

That’s why Ward, who attends St. Leo Church within St. Charles Lwanga Parish in Detroit, is part of a team of youth leading a project to make “blessing bags” for those living on the city’s streets.

“Society would call them losers; we’re saying ‘you are still people,’” Ward said.

YFACT, which stands for “Young Faith Activators of Christ’s Teachings,” was founded in 2009 as a collaborative effort between the Archdiocese of Detroit’s offices of Youth Ministry and Black Catholic Ministry. Following its success in recently raising $5,000 in its “Change for Change” project to support Detroit’s Core City Neighborhoods community development program, YFACT decided to turn its attention to the numerous homeless in Detroit.

The idea behind the “blessing bags” — filled with small toiletries, healthy snacks, water bottles and other items packed into gallon-size Ziploc bags — is to distribute them at local parishes for parishioners to keep in their cars. When encountering someone who is homeless, motorists then are able to assist in this small but thoughtful way.

The main bag-building event was April 25 at a lock-in at the Romulus Athletic Center, where youth from around the Central Region of the archdiocese packed five bags each.

“We want to continue what we started with Change for Change,” said Vivian Obia, a member of YFACT and parishioner of Corpus Christi Parish in Detroit.

Fr. Giorgio Ferrara, PIME, director of outreach and vocations at the mission society’s Detroit headquarters, stopped by the event to share his own experience helping the homeless.

In June 2005, while ministering in Japan, Fr. Ferrara recalled encountering a homeless man who was very ill.

“I know homeless in many different countries: he or she is not happy about his or her situation,” Fr. Ferrara said. He took the man to a local hospital and even housed him in the rectory while the man recovered.

“You’re young and you want to change the world,” Fr. Ferrara told the youth. “God needs you to do good things, so never say no.”

The grand total at the end of the lock-in was 488 blessing bags, and the plan is to continue making bags to distribute.

“I think it’s going to help a lot,” said Reasia Omar, an 11th-grader who attends Most Holy Trinity Parish in Detroit. “It would give (homeless individuals) more hope. It makes me want to do more to help.”

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YFACT’s ‘blessing bags’

YFACT continues to accept monetary donations for its ongoing blessing bags project. For more information or to contribute, contact Joyce Francois at (313) 237-5812 or [email protected].