Denton County Living Well Magazine Fall 2015 | Page 27

Walker stresses that cash does not meet real needs, only
felt needs.
“It sounds good,” he concedes, “but you could never guarantee where that money’s going to go. We feed lots of
people here every single day. If you were going to go buy
a guy a burger, fries and drink for about $6 at McDonald’s,
we could take that money and feed almost 10 people because of economies of scale.”
While they are at OurCalling, people are welcome to eat,
use a clean restroom, shower, meet with pastors, counselors
or chaplains, find a mentor, attend classes, grab a change
of clothes once a week, do their laundry, and more.
“We can meet a lot more needs than what you can do at a
fast food restaurant,” says Walker.
Unlike a shelter that ‘heals’ you and sends you on your
way, we never want to see anyone ever leave our program.
We want to see someone transfer from the receiving line to
the giving line.”
While he does admit the organization does see a lot of
people get off the streets, he stresses that is not the goal.
“Our goal is to see them live a sustainable lifestyle and
become a part of a healthy community,” he says. “You take
a guy that’s been living on the streets for five years and you
put a roof over his head, he is still functionally homeless.”
Walker claims most of the homeless people OurCalling
serves are not ready for housing or jobs, explaining the
biggest problem most of the people they serve have are
relational issues.
“Take a guy who has lost the last 20 jobs. Only a fool
should give him job number 21 without trying to figure out
why can’t he keep a job,” he says.

It’s a resource directory the organization encourages everyone to carry in their car, and give to homeless individuals
they see on the street. Walker notes every Dart driver and
officer carries one of these, as do many families, hospital
employees, in addition to Dallas public libraries.
“It’s printed on special paper so when the pages get wet
the pages don’t stick together and it’s printed in larger fonts
because the majority of the population we serve is between
40 and 60,” says Walker.
Free on the Apple App store, OurCalling recently launched
an app version of this directory, which allows users to
search resources (such as shelters, food pantries, mental
health clinics, and more) by location and provides detailed
information, including contact information, hours, and
more. Additionally, it features access to the meal calendar
the organization maintains with all the places to eat every
day for free.
It also lets users report homeless campsites and sends the
organization GPS coordinates, along with a photo and description. OurCalling has «Search & Rescue» teams that visit thousands of these campsites throughout Dallas County.
A site of remarkable work, OurCalling has received a
lot of attention from other urban areas. Walker mentions that the organization has received requests to expand to 15 different cities and build similar programs.
However, while he’s willing to share all the resources
OurCalling has on how to duplicate their organization, his response regarding leaving is a simple “no.”
“Right now, we don’t want to get any wider,” he stresses.
“We want to get deeper.”

Walker explains that OurCalling deals with the more personal, intimate issues for not being able to keep a job: life
skills, emotional instability, conflict management, forgiveness, and working on a team.
“In our program, they’re homeless, they come in every day,
they clock in like employees with a fingerprint scanner on the
wall, go to team meetings, meet with their mentor every week,
and attend addiction recovery classes. They want to be a part
of bettering themselves and helping the community.”

Resources

Possibly the most well known resource established by OurCalling is one valuable to the entire Dallas community.
“We maintain the largest database in Dallas County on all
these service provider––100s of them. We make connections every day. We’ll even have police officers call up and
ask where can we send this person.”
DENTON COUNTY Living Well Magazine | FALL 2015

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