[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 148 (Friday, October 16, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2224]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     TRIBUTE TO THE POVERELLO HOUSE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. GEORGE P. RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 16, 1998

  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the 
Poverello House on the occasion of its 25 year Silver Anniversary. the 
Poverello House is known throughout the Central Valley for its 
charitable work.
  The Poverello House was started in 1973 when Fresno newcomer Mike 
McGarvin began feeding 30 street people out of a van in Fresno's 
Chinatown. Today the Poverello House serves over 1000 meals a day at 
its downtown building. The program also distributes 65,000 meals a year 
to local churches. Mr. McGavins vocation has grown beyond feeding the 
hungry. Now the uninsured receive free medical and dental care. In 
addition, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts live at Poverello 
House and homeless men spend the day there.
  Mike McGavin's work with the poor began in the late 1960s in San 
Francisco, where he stumbled onto a coffee shop for the homeless. At 
the time he was a customer. With the help of the Franciscan priest who 
ran the program McGavin began volunteering. McGavin wanted to atone for 
the trouble he had caused as a teen in the Los Angeles gang and as a 
drug addict in San Francisco. Mike moved to Fresno and it is here that 
he began feeding the homeless of Chinatown. In 1981 a business man 
donated $60,000 that went towards the purchase of buying a building in 
Chinatown. A $1.3 million renovation doubled the building in 1992. The 
larger building now houses a resident program which allows 28 men to 
live at the house for a period of six months. In addition five men may 
stay at a halfway house northwest Fresno for as long as two years.
  Mr. Speaker I rise today to honor Mike McGavin and the Poverello 
House for 25 years of service to the community. Mr. McGavin has turned 
the atonement for his past into one of the finest charitable 
institutions in Fresno. I urge all of my colleagues to join with me in 
wishing Mike McGavin and the Poverello House many more years of 
continued success.

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