With The Kensington Project, Group Of Delaware County Mothers Making It Their Mission To Help Fight Opioid Epidemic
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Somerset Station in Kensington may very well be ground zero for the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, but a group of mothers from Delaware County is making it their mission to help people suffering from addiction by providing simple comforts.
Hope is not a word tossed around here very often, but underneath Somerset Station, healing can begin with a little help.
"A lot of people will say that's their fault, that's their fault," Meghan Andrelczyk said, "and in my belief, it's a disease."
"They didn't wake up one day and say this is the life I want to lead," Dawn McGinnis said.
A group of Delaware County mothers who have felt the full force of this crisis make up The Kensington Project, and they keep showing up every Sunday, feeding and clothing some of the city's most vulnerable.
"I see my daughter. This could have been my daughter," McGinnis said. "My daughter didn't end up down here, but she could have at any moment."
The opioid crisis claimed the life of McGinnis' daughter Alyssa, and countless others.
You may ask yourself, why do this in the middle of a pandemic? The answer is as simple as the question but equally as important. These are people too and they need our help.
"I know what it's like to be down here. I know what's it's like to have no one think that no one cares about you," Andrelczyk said, "and think that it's the end of the road."
Andrelczyk knows Kensington better than most. She says she lived here after becoming addicted to prescription meds and then later, heroin.
Now six years sober, she says she pulled herself out to provide for her three children.
"A lot of the times they'll say to us I don't want that just talk to me," Andrelczyk said. "It keeps me clean knowing what I'm doing is helping other people and knowing that I don't have to come back."
If you'd like to donate to their help effort, you can do so by clicking here.
