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.
We are all for sure closer than we think to being homeless, think that for sure we could highlight the degrees of seperation between you, I, everyone to being in this position.
ReplyDeleteReally could de-mistify this for people with blinkers on.
Programms in corporations where people may feel untouchable could work, really highlighting the precarious position most of us dont realise that we are in?
I agree, i really think that people live in a bubble sometimes and often are't thankful enough for the opportunities they have been given. What do you think about a starting a day were homeless people swopped places with corporate people?
ReplyDeleteI think it would shock people into paying attention, even in a guerilla marketing sense you could have homeless people swap with employed people that we just take for granted - like the Streat model where the humble barrista is replaced with someone with a real story that we can learn from.
ReplyDelete