Homeless World Cup

An Inspirational Story
UEFA.com, 12/20/2007

A documentary about the UEFA-backed Homeless World Cup, an international football tournament which changes lives, will enjoy its world premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah, in January.

The Homeless World Cup was this past fall. When I first read about it I thought it was an analogy or a joke but after seeing it pop up in my news feed a half dozen time I realized that it was literal, and real. Homeless players from Afghanistan, Kenya, Dublin, the US, Spain, and Russia (maybe more?) had the opportunity to represent their respective countries in a "world cup" to raise awareness about homelessness. I'm excited to see how the documentary turns out, Sundance usually has really neat films!

Homeless Youth Awareness Month

November is Homeless Youth Awareness Month, and Virgin Mobile's re*generation campaign is turning out to be one of the big players in disseminating info about the month. The re*generation campaign is a campaign to get youth involved with helping other youth.

This month I'm going to focus on youth by sharing articles and statistics, hopefully on a daily basis.

Here's the link to an article about the campaign:

Stand Up For Kids is Calling for an End to Youth Homelessness
PR-USA, 11/06/2007

STANDUP FOR KIDS, a national volunteer organization whose work with homeless youth has been acknowledged by the White House, the Honorable U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg, and key Senators and House members, has teamed up with ReCelluar, Inc. - the world's largest recycler and reseller of used cellular phones and accessories - to create a nationwide fundraising campaign. The campaign, "Calling An End To Youth Homelessness," encourages individuals, schools, corporations, and organizations to collect old cell phones and cell phone accessories to raise money for STANDUP FOR KIDS' efforts in helping runaway, homeless and street-dependent youth.

Are Shelters the Newest Yelp Category?

Homeless need Information about Where to go for Help
Currant.com, 10/21/2007

Brenda sits on a street corner while her partner, Noel, is off convincing South Green shopkeepers to let him wash windows for money. If he's successful, they'll live large tonight, maybe get some beer (for him) or soda (for her).

Recently, some members of the American Bar Association in Washington listened to University of Connecticut law professor Robert Whitman talk about people like Brenda. Whitman has never met Brenda, but as an advocate for therapeutic homes for mental health and addiction recovery, Whitman wants to start a national database of services for people who are homeless. Someone like Brenda could go to her local library, type in her zip code, and get up-to-date information on services, including phone numbers and hours.

People who are experiencing homelessness know how to use the internts just like you and I. Some have laptops that they charge and use in public spaces while others use the library computers to check email and surf the web. This innovative idea of creating a national database could help some of these individuals find the services that they need but my question is how much of an impact will the website have on service delivery? I haven't read any research and don't have hard numbers but I imagine that many people know where the services are, and if they don't know their friendly local outreach worker would be happy to tell them. My guess is that many people who are not accessing services have had bad experiences and may be hesitant to trust them again. So, while I think that this is an awesome effort, I think that it will end up being more of a tool for outreach workers and shelter staff than for those actually living on the streets. I'm curious to see how things develop.

Keeping it Real

Chronilcing the Invisible: A Photo Essay about Ottawa's Homeless
The Charlatan, 10/25/2007What it's Like to be Homeless in Wrexham
Evening Leader, 10/25/2007

WHEN James Graves collected his degree in electrical engineering, he didn't imagine that 10 years later he would be homeless, living rough on Wrexham's streets and having to get himself arrested to get a bed for the night.

The place he calls his bed is fraught with danger. If it isn't the fear of who might be lurking, it is the needles that litter the ground around where he lays his blanket. At night it is pitch black and damp, cold and noisy.

Even as someone who thinks about homelessness on a daily basis, I have never once thought about where I would sleep if I found myself homeless. I once had a conversation with a couple outreach workers about what time of day is best to sleep. While I said that I'd be more likely to sleep during the day, because there are more people around. They said that there more people means you're more likely to get robbed or harassed. While my heart goes out to those who face this decision every night, I'm certainly glad that it's one that I may never need to face.

Kids Can Help

Winslow Students Working to Help Homeless
Morning Sentential, 10/23/2007

Last year Kendra Littlefield's community-based learning students at Winslow High School were one of 10 national winners of a USA Weekend magazine Make a Difference Day award.

This week they are up to another good deed.

"Raising the Roof Over the Homeless" is the theme for the chem-free dance students have been organizing for the last two months, Winslow High senior Melanie Gagnon said.

St Brenden School Students Prepare Packages for the Homeless
The Providence Journal 10/23/2007

Middle school students from the St. Brendan School, a pre-kindergarten to grade eight private school in Riverside, could say that after preparing 150 sandwiches and other snacks for the state’s homeless Friday afternoon. The bag lunch was paired with personal hygiene items and socks — which were collected by the school’s lower grade students — to make it an all-school project.

Principal Joseph Renzulli said the school got the idea from a St. Brendan parishioner, Anne Pari, of East Providence. She delivers food to the homeless every Friday and Renzulli agreed the school would take over her duties one Friday.

They titled the project “Bread Lines.”

Highschool Helps Homeless
Lakeshore Advance, 10/24/2007

South Huron District High School student, Taryn Anstett handed Trevor Johnson of the Youth Action Centre (YAC) in London $365 for the centre during a presentation on homeless youth at the high school last week.
The students were told to act as lobby groups for a law project and made their primary focus of the campaign, awareness of homelessness. They went above and beyond and started by collecting pocket change from students and teachers over two days, raising the money for homeless youth. “The response was incredible,” says Anstett.

Nine Year Old to Walk to Tally For Homeless
Tampa Bay's 10, 10/22/2007

In the past three years, Zach Bonner has collected supplies for Hurricane Charley victims, raised money for the “Teaching Tools Hillsborough Schools” program, organized a holiday party for kids displaced by Katrina and given away more than 750 backpacks for needy kids.

For his efforts, President Bush last year presented Zach with a volunteer service award. But the 9-year old is not slowing down, he’s just moving on to his next big project.

There is another article that I have saved and want to write about but the sudden flurry of youth and schools working to help people experiencing homelessness deserves some attention. Service learning is a valuable tool for all kinds of social issues and is a fantastic way to bring classroom subjects to real life. I wish that I had an opportunity to participate in projects like these when I was in school but alas, in the 90s it was all about HIV and DARE, subjects that would be a little more risque to develop service learning projects around.

Edit: A couple more...
Virginia Run Students walk for Homelessness
Students Collect Pennies for the Homeless

Hunters Helping the Hungry

Hunters Helping the Hungry

Hunters Helping the Hungry is a program that enables hunters to donate venison, providing high quality protein to needy individuals throughout New Jersey. In its fifth year, will continue to operate with limited funding. Therefore hunters wishing to donate deer must also donate a minimum of $25 towards the $65 fee charged by participating butchers. Hunters Helping the Hungry is now a 501-C3 Corporation, and all donations are tax deductible.

Nighttime Rounds with Health Care for the Homeless: The Outreach Van

After we met with several patients the Pine Street Inn outreach van arrived. Jim wrapped things up inside and grabbed our coats. It's currently a mild fall in Massachusetts and although it wasn't very cold the skies threatened to storm so I yanked my two sizes two big pullover on, just in case.

I've been out in an outreach van before but the van I'm used to is nothing like this. Inside there were several boxes, one full of blankets and one full of socks. When you opened the back doors there was a cooler filled with sandwiches, fruit, dry soup, hot chocolate, and two water dispensers, one hot and one cold. The van I'm used to plays more of a shuttle service role, is lucky to have socks to distribute, and giving out food is against program policy (because of health concerns, not because it's a cheap program).

We drove down Commonwealth Avenue, on the mall. I have walked the mall dozens of times, during the day and in the early evening hours, but I had never seen someone who presented as a homeless person there. That night I saw how many people really do call the Commonwealth Mall home. There was a variety of people, from an older men who needed to have an injured jaw taken care of to a young guy in a suit.

Outreach runs continue to be engaging, dare I use the word "fun", experiences for me. Everyone was appreciative of what we had to offer, even though it was only a light meal and some human contact. The staff that I talk with are interesting and passionate about their work and those who aren't are often burnt out and need a vacation that this field doesn't allow them to afford. The only thing that worries me is that the shock of seeing how people on the streets are forced to live is starting to wear off.