An alternative perspective

Just scoping out other bloggers who write about homelessness and came across http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/

It is the first I have read up on that advocates being homeless as choice, almost a right - not usually the perspective you think of when it comes to homelessness.

I found the article 'Solving Homelessness' of particular interest. A small quote from the blog reads 'As a homeless person, I do not want someone to feed me. I do not want someone to house me. I do not want a blanket, and I will not work for food! You have to ask me what it is I need if you want to have an effect'.

This raises the question about what will really solve homelessness, that not every homeless person is a charity case. Just like people with a home, people without homes should not be placed into one basket, each person has different needs and purpose.
LQ

Fair go or Fair gone?!

Fair go mate…….

Once upon a time (RIGHT NOW!!!), in a place not too far from where you are, lives a young boy and a young girl. These are ordinary children just like you or I am or was, only, when they are hungry or cold or just a little tired they have no place to go home to.

These children have feelings just like you and I, they feel cold and hot, they feel lonely and scared. But, unlike you or I who have a home to return to at the end of a long day or to hide in on a particularly hot or cold day, these children are homeless! That’s right, homeless!

That means NO warm bed, NO TV, NO toys of their own, NO fridge to keep their food fresh, NO stove to heat up their food, NO clothes to keep them warm in the winter, NO fan or air conditioning to keep them cool in summer.

Sounds pretty horrible doesn’t it? Well unfortunately it gets even worse……. These children are not only homeless but they are often the victims of abuse. That’s right abuse, They have been physically, mentally, sexually abused and all before they are even at an age to understand what’s happening to them!’

Everyone deserves a “fair go” right? Well then how come it doesn’t apply to these kids? According to Homelessness Australia 105,000 will be homeless tonight. Among this huge number of people is 7,483 families with young children, 12% or 12,133 are children under the age of 12.  Another 21% or 21,940 of these are young people aged between 12-18. 

We call ourselves the “lucky country” and say everyone deserves a fair go” but, it seems to me we lost our way some time ago!!!

So get on board! Be active in whatever way you can! Even just tell your friends about the shocking numbers of people in Australia without a home and start to really give every Australian a “fair go”!

Homefulness goes gorilla

In an effort to generate more awareness of the Melbourne homlessness concern, Homefulness has embarked on a gorilla marketing campaign designed to direct people onto the Homefulness blog and Facebook page. We see this as an important part of our online marketing and believe that it will generate traffic on our sites. The campaign focuses on the common ideal that homeless people live in cardboard boxes. Although this is not always the case there is a common perception by the general public, manly thanks to Hollywood that homeless people live in giant shanty towns made up of oversized cardboard boxes. Understanding this, we aim to accentuate this ideal by creating mini house’s made out of recycled cardboard boxes. We indent for people to make the connection that for a lot of homeless Melbournians a cardboard box is sometimes as close to home as they can get.  Each box will have the Homefulness brand displayed on the roof and side and a laminated sign directing people to the Homefulness blog and Facebook.

Each House will then be secretively placed in high traffic area around Melbourne.

Other then generating traffic on our blog and Facebook we are purposely building our Homefulness brand around the cardboard box. It is our intention in future campaigns and events to incorporate the use of recycled cardboard boxes to the extent that when someone sees a cardboard box on the street they will think of the Homefulness brand.   

Together, let’s make the world a homeful place.

Helping the homeless with capitalism

The team at Streat (http://streat.com.au/about) is doing some awesome work in helping homeless people in gaining employment and skills via their street cafe cart services in Melbourne whilst serving those more fortunate delicious food!

They are “Stopping homelessness the delicious way”.

We at Homefulness think that this is a great initiative in taking consumers wants for coffee and other café delivered food products, harnessing this demand and using the financial gain derived from operating this type of service for the purpose of helping our passion, eradicating homelessness.

It really makes you think, what other things that we consume so regularly that you take for granted, how can we help this and other causes via harnessing the power of business?

Like, maybe, Social lotteries in our post titled “Talk is cheap, let’s gamble!’

Taking the things that we take for granted and using them for socially responsible aims, really converting them from the mundane organization, to ones that will help make this world a better place.

Nick

Homeless Health Interview

Interview with Melbourne Doctor Simon Rose about the health issues of homeless people.


Dr Simon Rose has worked extensively with homeless people in a number of different institutions for the past 15 years. In this interview Josh and Dr Simon Rose discuss some of the health issues that homeless people face and why in Dr Rose's opinion many of these people are homeless.

Talk is cheap, let’s gamble!

 Socially responsible gambling, sounds like a ridiculous concept at face value, but – maybe it’s not.

What if you could enter a lottery, but if you didn’t win, the company profits went to supporting socially responsible organisations that are striving for social change….like Homefulness!

Through partnerships with organisations trying to support our inaugural social issue, Homelessness – we can start to make more of an impact. We can harness the pool of wasted losses from traditional lottery based games into helping, not just homelessness, but anything!

This is happening around the world already, why not in Australia?

“BIG Lottery Fund (http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index) in the UK is operating this model to great success in partnership with The National Lottery.

Of each pound spent on The National Lottery each year, BIG Lottery Fund receives about 13 percent, it has contributed 3.6 Billion Pounds, and that’s with a B, since 2004 (http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index/about-uk/about_blf.htm).

For the financial year 2011, Tatts Group Limited generated approximately AUD 1.6 Billion in revenue within its lottery arm (Tatts Group Limited FY11 Annual Report), if we tap into only half of the slice which BIG Group can access in the UK at 6.5%, that’s $104,000,000.00 per financial year that can be obtained for organisations who can effect social change.

Of course we have to acknowledge that gambling irresponsibly can cause many of the social issues that we as a society face, so it is an approach that isn’t for everyone – we support responsible gambling, responsible everything for that matter and want to harness this otherwise in the most part wasted revenue stream into helping the Homeless to begin with – but this certainly can begin to serve other very very worthy causes.

In the US, the California State Lottery is supporting schools, always a great cause, but especially in the current economic climate where the US as a whole has a small debt to GDP issue which means there might be a little less to throw the way off poor students!

Call us crazy, but – harnessing this huge potential for socially responsible causes could change the face of social venture capitalism in this country – problems that were insolvable, could become solvable due to funds that were previously unattainable, becoming suddenly available – issues that received absolutely no air-play could now be highlighted with the support that we can help deliver.

Who knows, because we love to gamble, Homelessness could be a thing of the past – we could all soon be, Homeful.

Nick

We’re all on the edge of homelessness

How close are you to being homeless? No really, think about it. For the majority of people in first world countries like our own the possibility of becoming homeless is so slim that we simply disregard the question. But if we think a little deeper and a little harder we realize that we are a lot closer to being homeless then we think. I over heard a conversation in a café the other day that made me realize that just how close we all are to becoming homeless. The conversation was between one of the café staff and a customer, just a normal looking gentleman in dressed in neat business attire. The conversation started of like any other, “Hi how are you?” said the café staff member. The gentleman’s reply however was anything but normal. This is what was said.

The Gentleman:

I’m not good at all, my wife kicked me out of the house last night and I had nowhere to go so I was forced to sleep in the car.

The Café Staff Member:

Oh, that’s not good. Don’t you have any family or friends to stay with?

The Gentleman:

No, we just moved to Melbourne, I don’t know anyone and my family lives overseas.

The Café Staff Member:

Where will you stay tonight?

The Gentleman:

I don’t know.

This is just one example, there are many more. What if you lost your job or the company you work for went bankrupt so you didn’t have enough money to make your loan repayments? What if you’re a successful we’ll educated person that for some reason just made one bad investment decision and lost your life savings? What if you partner got really sick and you had to give up your job to look after them and you had no money to pay the mortgage? I’ll ask the question one more time, how close are you to being homeless?

Now it is easy to sit there reading this thinking that will never happen to me, I’m cautious, I save my money and make good decisions. But the honest truth is that this is happening somewhere in Melbourne everyday. Normal people becoming homeless.

If you are someone that thinks this will never happen to you then we need you. At homefulness we need people like you to realize that you have the power to transform the lives of the homeless, with you hands, your hearts and your finances.

Join Homefulness and together we will create a homeful world.