By Rita McInerney

Janice Brown has begun a one-year volunteer commitment at Covenant House, Father Bruce Ritter's refuge for teenage street kids in the Times Square district of New York City.

Mrs. Brown, mother of a grown daughter and member of St. John the Evangelist parish in Hapeville from 1966 until 1983, said she had been thinking of "doing something along those lines" for years. "I felt it was a good place to start. A lot of people don't really like the way the world is. If you don't, you have to start in any small way to make little changes…"

Covenant House appealed to her because it was a place where she could help change lives for the better and have spiritual support while doing it.

She reported to the community house on Eighth Avenue on Sept. 14 and will spend a month in formation, mainly spiritual. Focus will be on the demands of living in community with about 50 other volunteers, she said.

She had a taste of what her life will be like for the next year during a week of orientation last February. This followed submission of her application and résumé. Her decision to volunteer came after the week of communal living.

"I think it was a sense of peace and joy I felt. The work is intense and somewhat draining; the successes don't outnumber the failures. In spite of that there was an energy there that I wanted to be part of."

Three hours of the volunteer's day is spent in prayer, she said. The day begins at 6 a.m. with morning prayer and meditation. Evening prayer and Mass at 5:30 are followed by the evening meal, the only one the community eats together because of the varied shift hours.

About 50 percent of the people applying to be volunteers are accepted, Mrs. Brown said, and the average age is about 24, although, like her, there are older men and women who apply. The community makes the decision on each prospect after prayerful discernment and discussion. Those accepted must begin their volunteer service within a year of notification.

Volunteers receive a stipend of $12 weekly and are covered by health insurance. Board and a room, which she described as spartan, are provided.

On the first day of orientation week she told herself, "I'll leave after lunch." One the second day, she decided to give it another day and by the end of the week "I knew if I was invited I would come back," she recalled. Her invitation came in March.

"When you're there a few days everything looks better and brighter, you forget about the bars on the windows," and the neighborhood, she found.

Once her formation is over, Janice Brown is hopeful she will be working directly with the young runaways and prostitutes, male and female, Covenant House is there to help.

The street victims, many of them drug addicts, "come in on their own," she said. Perhaps they have been approached by an outreach worker, saved the card with the Covenant House address and made the decision to try and escape their misery and degradation. These kids range in age from 15 to 21. Once they have turned to Covenant House they will be helped to get back into school or to find a job. The agency, one of the largest in New York City, can plug them into other social service offices that can help them salvage their young lives.

"The main object is to get them back to their families, providing the family is not the main reason they're on the street," Mrs. Brown said.

As for Father Bruce Ritter, the priest whose name is synonymous with rescuing young castaways of society, she found him to be "never worn down, very contented. He knows that he's doing God's work."

Janice Brown's journey to Covenant House was by a long route. A native of New England, she married and raised a daughter in Atlanta. In 1983, divorce changed her life. She sold her possessions and flew to Ireland -- with one suitcase. There she lived in a cottage, rented sight unseen, near Kilkeel in Northern Ireland.

She went there, she said, "to be replenished, reenergized. I didn't have anything in me to give out to someone else."

She lived alone in the little cottage at the foot of the Mourne Mountains, overlooking the Irish Sea. There was time for reading, thinking, writing. She had no car, it was a five-mile walk into Kilkeel where she shopped for food.

The people were friendly to her during these daily excursions. "Being a stranger, I needed them more than they needed me," she said. "I had to reach out, to win them over…" Many became good friends.

Among these new friends were Protestant supporters of Ian Paisley, the anti-Catholic clergyman so prominent in the bitter religious struggle in Ulster. And her life among the people gave her an insider's view. Here Catholic and Protestant farmers worked side by side on the small, rocky hillside farms. All of them, she discovered, want peace.

When she came back to Atlanta last fall a friend mentioned Covenant House, suggesting "It might be a good place for you."

She traveled to New York with her one suitcase. For her now, life is more enjoyable, she doesn't need "extra baggage. I know less is more because I've lived it."