Caritas Village founder demonstrates how one person can affect change

Want to know the difference one person can make? Walk the empty, cracked streets of Binghamton down Harvard Avenue, with its ramshackle houses to the old metal door of Caritas Village. From the outside, the former Masonic Lodge, looks like a factory from the 18th century.

You expect the old building to tell stories about heavy machines, arduous labor and sweating workers. But if you step through the heavy metal door and look inside, the masonry reveals its real interior: a big living room, where dozens of people from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds are sitting around small tables, draped in black-and-white checkered cloths, laughing, eating and smiling together. This is the heart of Caritas Village.   

Ask for Onie Johns, the 57-year-old founder. And when she walks over the creaking wooden floorboards, coming toward you with kind eyes and a warm smile, ask her about this old building, where she and a friend opened a community center in 2006. Don´t forget to ask her about the former Grand Temple of the Masons, a 4,000 square feet hall with 100 theater seats and a stage, where children and youth can discover their artistic gifts.

Johns grew up on a farm in Mississippi and worked in medicine for most of her life. She was trained in surgery at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. After her graduation, she worked in surgery as an office nurse and later moved to medical management.

"After my divorce, I wanted to start a new life. I wanted to create a place where people could come together every day, put their feet under the same table and share the journey," Johns said.   

In 2000, Johns and a friend of hers moved into a house in Binghamton, five blocks away from what would become Caritas Village. They formed a mission group in their house, where people could meet and pray. After six months, her friend realized that he could not continue his involvement with the community. He moved on, married and started a new life, while Johns continued on her own for three years.

"It was hard to move on alone, but the missionary group supported me and even encouraged me to build something bigger," Johns said.

When the Masons put their building on Harvard Avenue up for sale in 2004, the group bought it from their own money and got a zoning waiver as a Community Center in 2006. This laid the foundation of Caritas Village.

A volunteer group of eight people run the Village for a couple hundred participants. Without charging for any service, the center's offerings include art workshops, yoga lessons, a chess club, movie nights, tutoring for children and hot lunch every day. The kitchen workers are the only ones who are paid.

 "I just love it. It´s pretty incredible what we´ve done just with donations in five years," Johns said with a big smile.

 One of the tutoring volunteers is Cristina Condori, a 44-year-old Argentinean. She found her way to Caritas Village through Hispanic immigrants, who asked her to teach other immigrants about their rights in the U.S.

Ask Johns about Condori and a smile will form on her lips.

"Oh," she says, looking into the crowded room where an old man eats his soup in company with three African-American teenagers. "She is incredible. She is a blessing for Memphis."

Since she arrived in the U.S. in 2001, Condori has devoted her life to helping people who are in need, no matter where they are from and what social background they have.  

"Why should I treat a Hispanic different than a U.S. American? All human beings are equal in dignity and rights," Condori said.

Every single day, Johns´ alarm wakes her up at 7 a.m. She walks down Merton Street and unlocks the heavy door of Caritas Village. According to her, helping people is what she wants and wanted to do her whole lifetime.

"It simply feeds my soul," she said

For Condori, the hours of work are countless also. When she flips open her organizer, there is almost no space to add a new event or appointment. Clean handwriting in the column for Monday says "Dia de los Muertos" in the morning, "Community Garden" at noon, "Teaching at the trailer" and "Community Award" in the evening. And then there is something added between the noon and evening appointments in scratchy writing: "Pick up Aylen from concert."   

It was the summer of 2001 when Condori and her two daughters, Aylen and Iris, boarded the airplane to their new home in Miami, where Mario Mercado, the husband and father, found work as a mechanic one year earlier. They didn´t know what to expect and didn´t speak any English. The only thing they knew was they wanted to get away from the crashing economy in Argentina and start a new life for their two daughters, if nothing else. The helplessness the family felt when they arrived in the U.S. is part of what motivates Condori in her volunteer work.

After the family moved to Memphis, Condori took on many volunteer duties and formed a group in Memphis called Comunidades Unidas en Una Voz, which translates to Communities of One United Voice. The group consists of 10 activists from Memphis and South America. They knock on doors, go out on the street to protest, and sometimes have to get in contact with the police to try to change something in the treatment of illegal Hispanic immigrants.

But can one person really make a difference in the bigger picture?

"I don´t think that one person on his own can change something in the whole system," Johns said. "But if you are passionate about something, it´s going to be contagious, and people will join you. And I believe all big movements start with one person, and all change starts with one conversation."