The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) is a Washington, D.C.–based charity that provides services to the poor and homeless including food, shelter, clothing, medical care, case management, education and art programs.
[2][3] Father Guinan had written the Paulist Council to establish a planned community, based on a poor and simple alternative lifestyle of service to others.
Guinan's statement of purpose at this time was "to resist the violent; to gather the gentle; to help free compassion and mercy and truth from the stockades of our empire.
[5][6] In 1972 Mother Teresa—whom they did not know well because this happened seven years before the Nobel Prize, came with her friend Eileen Egan to serve the first bowls of soup when the kitchen opened, eating with the first guests.
On November 4, 1984, after Snyder fasted to draw attention to the plight of the homeless, President Ronald Reagan ordered the renovation of CCNV's shelter.