6 www.minorityreporter.net |JANUARY 6 - 12 | 2014
LOCAL
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Local family celebrates christmas
with the homeless
By Delani Weaver
Over 100 homeless men, women
and children were given an early
Christmas party at the Central Library
of Rochester and Monroe County.
Several volunteers and sponsors from
all around the city did their part to
make sure that the homeless brought
in Christmas with a smile from the
small idea of a local family who lives to
give, officials stated.
Olivia Bradley-West, her husband
Norman West and her children threw
a Christmas party for the homeless in
the Kate Gleason Auditorium of the
library. Bradley-West said she got the
idea from a smell in the library.
“I had a meeting at the central library
for the boys’ book and on the way to
the conference room, I inquired about
the smell,” Bradley-West said. “It
smelled like campfire. I asked a lady if
there was a fireplace somewhere, and
she said no. She said one of the things
that contributes to that smell is that
there are homeless people that live
underneath the building. They reside
in the library during the day and at
night they go underneath the building
and make campfires, and the smell
circulates through the ventilation
system.”
West said, initially, she never intended
to throw a party for the homeless.
She and her family planned on making
bags and giving them to the homeless
instead.
“We had been in the process of making
“Be a Blessing Bags,” which were bags
that were filled with toiletries for the
homeless. But we weren’t sure which
homeless people to give the