The people on the streets of Minneapolis call her their "street mother." City officials call her "an extraordinary leader" and an "urban saint." But Mary Jo Copeland, the founder and director of Sharing and Caring Hands, is not looking for praise. She knows from experience what it is to live in poverty and brokenness and she is striving to make the world a better place for the poor today. Copeland's startup of Sharing and Caring is all the more remarkable given her painful past. She grew up in a family where her parents fought constantly and her emotionally disturbed father often beat her mother. Mary Jo married Dick Copeland and had 12 children (6 boys and 6 girls). She was a full time mother until the youngest child began school

   Sharing and Caring Hands grew from a small volunteer organization with a $5,000 a month budget working out of a 2,000 square-foot storefront, to a large volunteer organization that spends over $400,000 a month on the needs of over 20,000 people who come through our doors monthly. This work is now being done out of three buildings, worth $19 million, totaling 140,000 square-feet owned by Sharing and Caring Hands located on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Mary Jo has never taken a salary.