Profile: Delia Ramirez
Delia Ramirez changes lives by giving hope to the hopeless.
"I challenge people to consider, "Who today can I serve? Whose life can I make a little better today?"
When Delia Ramirez, 25, says she grew up in the church, she means it—literally.
When she was one, her parents came to Humboldt Park United Methodist Church in Chicago looking for food. They were offered an apartment at the church.
Today, as executive director of Humboldt Park Social Services, her office is in her parent’s former bedroom.
 “I’m a lifetime member of Humboldt Park United Methodist Church,” she says.
She works with the Center for Changing Lives, an agency founded by Humboldt Park Social Services to provide support, empowerment and advocacy for the homeless and disadvantaged in the Logan Square and Humboldt Park communities. They also work with people recently released from prison.
“Part of what we realized is that Humboldt Park is the third largest returning community for formerly incarcerated people, a lot of them being women. There is no Latino program that works with formerly incarcerated people. Yet, they’re expected to get jobs,” she said.
The church started a truck-driving program to train people so they can find a job and make a living wage. The 13-week course gets a person started in the market with a job that pays $17 an hour.
“One of our clients just recently said to us at a meeting, ‘You know I walked out with a permit in one hand and hope in another.’ And I thought that really conveyed a lot because we give you some of the tools and some of the resources, but if we have not empowered you then we’ve done very little.”
Ramirez says her family was one of the first recipients of the church’s outreach ministry.
“If I am a Christian and I have been called by God to love other people, it is my job, my duty, not a choice or an option to serve people.” –Delia Ramirez
“We needed food. So we came to the local food pantry.” Her father was a Catholic from Guatemala, and her mother was a Pentecostal. When they found the food pantry, they also found a church home. “In the United Methodist Church, they found themselves the perfect combination and balance of the two.”
Even though they had very little, Ramirez says her family never thought of themselves as homeless.
“We never thought of ourselves as homeless—those people are panhandlers. That’s not us. We just needed a little bit of affordable rent while we get ourselves together,” she says. Now they have a home of their own but they are still closely bound to the church.
“We’re connected to every part of the church—from prayer service, home service, Bible study on Monday, Tuesday’s youth gathering. But it almost meant that I literally lived here.”
At 16, she began working for the church and is now celebrating her 8th anniversary as a permanent full-time employee.
 “I’ve realized that even if I’d have to leave and actually went to law school, even if I went and ran for office to be state senator, wherever…wherever I go my heart remains here ‘cause this is what formed me.”
She gets her passion for serving others from her understanding of what it means to be a Christian. “It’s one commandment in the Bible … to love my neighbor as I love myself. I cannot love you and see you hurt. I cannot love you and see you die of hunger. And so if I call myself a Christian, if I really, really love people, then I have to serve and work for people and work with people.”
She lives by Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
“And at the end of the day, you can talk about God all you want, you can preach all you want. It’s really what you show people. Don’t talk about it. Just show it.”
The following people contributed to this Profile:
Audio story by Mike Hickcox; print story by Kathy Gilbert; videography by Jon Kaplan.
UMC.org Profiles are produced by Pam Price, 615-742-5405.
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Humboldt Park Social Services
Humboldt Park United Methodist Church
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