Started in 1938 as a soup kitchen to feed men displaced by Great Depression, Atlanta Mission strives to transform the lives of those facing homelessness. To meet the increasing needs in the society, Atlanta mission continued expanding its services and in 1967, expands its services to offer recovery services to men facing homelessness. The Potter’s House opens offering long-term residential recovery programs for men experiencing homelessness due to addiction. Today, the mission offers following services:

• Beds
• Meals
• Laundry
• Social services
• Life skills classes
• One-on-one counseling
• Clinical groups
• Process groups
• Vocational training
• Small groups
• Spiritual services

The Shepherd’s Inn serves up to 450 men every day with the goal of shepherding them, one at a time, into a new life of independent living.

The Need: Being a residential facility, The Shepherd’s Inn provides hot meals to its clients. Though most of the meals are taken care of by the shelter, clients were not getting snacks on Saturdays. Atlanta Sai Center came to know of this need and started a service to provide bagged snacks to clients. We started calling this service ‘Narayana Seva’.

The service:  Every week, we meet at a devotee’s place and bag non-perishable snacks. These items are carefully selected to have mixed shelf life to serve as light snack or as a light meal. While chanting Gayathri, devotees unpack items and make about ~200 bags. After bagging, we sing bhajans and drop bags at the Shelter.

Interesting fact: Since the start about two decades ago, this service has never stopped. Even during the peak of pandemic, we delivered unpacked items to the shelter.