Helping Homeless
Some things that have been done to help this cause are:
- Providing food and residential stability.
- Improving mental health.
- A survey where over 60% citizens agreed on paying more taxes and giving donations of goods and money (the-homeless.com, 2006).
- 5 billion dollars were invested in programs designed to help homeless people reducing the percentages of homelessness.
- Over 600 volunteers gathered together during Thanksgiving Day to fight against homelessness. It was the 15th consecutive year that these community members had served dinner to 1,800 homeless people in congressional grounds showing that they were fighting for homeless’ rights. Foods served in the dinners were turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, string beans, desserts, sodas, and juice. Some business also donated to this event turkeys and a variety of desserts. Not only food was given away but also coats, hats, gloves, and other winter clothing were distributed among them.
- CNN also published an article in 2011 where the author Michael Cary explains how Social networking media such as Face Book and Twitter help homeless people to get food and a house. In this article, a personal story of Rd Plasschaert was narrated and how when she was about to lose her house, after losing her job, she signed up for Twitter in search of “homelessness-related hash tags, or topics” (Homeless turn to Twitter for food, shelter, 2011). Days later, she got in contact with one of her followers for advice on available services and was able to get her own studio apartment. With this, she inspired mark Horvar, a homeless himself from Hollywood, to create a website called WeAreVisible.com to teach homeless people how to use social networking sites so that they can have a voice in society like the rest of the citizens. (cnn.com).
- To help out homeless college students, the FHAR at UTEP offers them housing, food, and medical care at UTEP. According to Lachica, coordinator of FHAR, the results of this program are that many students become successful at school and they have a community they can form part of. It is of great help for students since it is known that one of these homeless students is now going into graduate school to pursue his masters (Masterson, 2012, Kvia.com).
- U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness’ secretary also mentions in her speech that her plan for the upcoming years is that with this organizations, by 2012 she expects to bring a finish and prevention to homeless between veterans and infants. (National alliance to end homelessness, 2012, hhs.gov).