New York is a brighter and cleaner place because of the formerly homeless and disadvantaged people who sweep our streets clean as part of the Doe Fund’s Ready, Willing and Able program.
And the Doe Fund wouldn’t exist without the vision and stewardship of founder and president George McDonald.
In nominating McDonald for a Community Medal, state Sen. Daniel Hevesi said Ready, Willing and Able reinvigorated the Queens Boulevard section of his Rego Park business district.
“The work these formerly homeless individuals have done in the last year has been incredible,” Hevesi told The Post in his nomination.
“Residents and merchants of Rego Park are thoroughly satisfied with the positive attitude and conscientious manner in which these individuals work.”
McDonald, who was also nominated for the award by James Whelan of the Downtown Brooklyn Council and Barbara Adler of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, said he started the Doe Fund in 1985 after failing to get elected to Congress.
McDonald wanted to prove that helping the homeless was more than just a campaign slogan and egged Mayor Ed Koch’s administration into helping him provide an outlet for drug addicts and homeless people in their quest for self-esteem.
“Koch gave me a contract just to shut me up,” McDonald said with a laugh. “He fully expected me to fail and become another disgruntled person.”
That didn’t happen, and in 1990, McDonald got the brooms out of the closet and formed Ready, Willing and Able, the blue-uniformed army of community street-cleaners. “We get homeless people off the streets and get the streets cleaned at the same time,” McDonald said.
Some 1,200 workers have graduated from the program – graduation being a paying job in the private sector – but only after they’ve successfully cleared bi-weekly drug tests for 18 months.
Hevesi said he was pleased to go after $15,000 in grants last year to launch Ready, Willing and Able in his district.
McDonald said New Yorkers support the program by contributing some $2.7 million annually to the Doe Fund.