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In the spring of 2001, Mark Bergel pulled off to the side of Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C., and turned his life in a new direction.

The instructor at American University and Bethesda resident had been requiring his students to engage in service projects to help people suffering from poverty in the District. But one day, after visiting some of the District homes where poverty had hit hardest, Bergel, now 46, decided to dedicate his life to giving needy families a new start. This personal resolution has tested both his endurance and that of the organization he founded eight years ago, A Wider Circle, particularly over the past year.

The organization Bergel started in his apartment now receives more than 200 calls a day from needy individuals and families in the Washington area to its Silver Spring offices. They are seeking everything from mattresses and non-perishable foods to silverware and classes on money management and basic job skills.

The group will serve between 13,000 to 15,000 people in the metropolitan area in 2009, compared to about 9,000 last year, according to Bergel. He oversees 50 to 100 volunteers during any given week, and the organization provides an average of $1,400 worth of materials and aid to every family it serves. About half the people the organization serves live in Montgomery County, while the other half are distributed between the District and Prince George's County.

But just as important as the numbers are the personal connections he and his staff try to create between themselves and the needy, trying to match donor families with families that they've helped.

"I don't think we'll tolerate poverty if we know it personally," Bergel said during a brief respite from the hubbub of A Wider Circle's offices last Thursday.

After losing her job nine months ago and undergoing three surgeries on her legs, Lita Goings of Hyattsville had an apartment to her name but not a great deal more. Then she heard about A Wider Circle from her daughter, and drove with her family to their offices on Saturday to pick up two twin beds and whatever other furniture she needed for herself and her family.

Without A Wider Circle, Goings said, "I don't know what I would have done."

Bergel emphasized the "complete consciousness" that comes to people mired in poverty, down to the smells of a bare apartment of a family struggling to obtain meals for a day and the associated despair, and how this led him to address the problem in a holistic way that includes child care during workshops for adults and prenatal counseling for women.

The group's Silver Spring offices double, packed with files on families receiving aide from A Wider Circle, as a warehouse for a hodgepodge of bedding, dresser drawers downstairs and baby clothes upstairs.

"The D.C. area is a good area to do this because it has resources," Bergel said.

Directing a group of volunteers on which items to pick up in her Chevy Chase West home on Saturday, Anita Sama has donated multiple times to A Wider Circle and has strong praise for the group's punctuality and efficiency.

Sama said she once was a single mother and was fortunate to have family help support her. She also knows many people in need don't have this option despite the prosperity in the area.

"That's the story of Washington, isn't it?" Sama said.

When people in need come to the Silver Spring offices to pick up items, one of the main goals is to treat them like customers in stores and let them have as much control over what they want as possible, said Nicole Newman, who grew up in Wheaton and volunteers with A Wider Circle through the AmeriCorps/VISTA national service group.

"Here, we try to be as anti-red tape as possible," Newman said.

Bergel dedicates seven days a week to A Wider Circle, and hopes the organization's operating budget can expand as time goes on. But in the end he wants it to vanish entirely, along with poverty in the Washington area.

"I ultimately want the organization to be extinct," he said.