My Agent of Change For Homelessness

In the earlier post that I made, I talked a lot about the issue that I am studying. I am focusing on homelessness in Philadelphia. My former post discussed many other factors that play into people becoming homeless such as mental illness, being laid off of a job, Covid 19, and not being paid enough. One of the biggest things I talked about was not just adults being homeless but children and families as well. For further background and information on my research, you can click here to see my prior post.

Two words Chosen 300. This establishment made my idea/experience come to life. It was very realistic and worth every minute and second of my time. I partnered up with an organization called chosen 300. I really admired their mission statement. Their mission is “To bring people of different membership groups together; helping them to realize that despite our differences in our race, ethnic group, denomination, social class, economic classes, or the diverse ways we practice our faith; we can unify ourselves for the common good. The purpose of our unification is to distribute meals and services to the homeless throughout the Philadelphia Region and around the world.”

To begin, I knew that I wanted to do more than my original idea which was to take up a fundraiser and donate the collection. I wanted to also give more of my time. Not only was I able to give my time, but I was also able to convince my family to give some of their time as well. On May 15th, My family and I arrived at Chosen 300 to volunteer our time. During our time there we labeled approximately 150 food containers, prepared the food, packaged food, and snacks, organized, cleaned, handed out the packaged food and drinks. During this time, we were able to hold conversations with the people in need about their day and how it was going. I was also able to interview the Project Manager for this particular location (Spring Garden).

There was a line of people outside waiting to be served. I have mixed emotions about some of the attitudes. Some people were genuinely grateful, and some were demanding and some would snatch the food right out of your hands. I believe that My presence was definitely effective because the organization was very short-staffed, they were overwhelmed. Giving out the food, having a conversation, and being generous really has an effect on people and shows people that you don’t look down on them for their situation.

After looking back at all of the work that I did for this project I can say that I really enjoyed doing this project and highly recommend everyone doing it. While doing this project I learned that I definitely need to go out of my comfort zone a little bit more because when I do I do excellent work like this. I also learned that there are people and organizations that actually go really hard and full in for my issue which brings warmth to my heart to know that I’m not the only one trying to make a change. I wish that I had more time because I had so many ideas that I am still going to do, and I could have used them for this project. I would say that in order to make a big change we need everyone to fundraise, donate, and give their time to volunteer and help out organizations like chosen 300 make a change.