PROGRAMS / TIMELINES & MILESTONES
OUR SEEMINGLY ENDLESS JOURNEY
Creating Solutions to major human injustices like “Homelessness and Senior Adult Social Isolation” has been an arduous yet awe inspiring task.
Even our claim that solutions exist must be met with skepticism. The factors that have allowed us to understand the basic elements needed to empower our Unhoused and Senior neighbors to regain their personal independence, is no mystery to us. We have experienced their agony and despair. Those life lessons made us view answers with only one goal. End results are not a slogan. Success is mandatory.
The daily tragedies of a person living on our neighborhood streets being too cold or too hot, being scorned or assaulted, becoming sleep deprived, losing all hope and finally succumbing to drug or alcohol abuse resulting in mental illness must be stopped.
The daily onset of boredom, uselessness, financial stress, aches and pains, lack of social activities and poor nutrition creates a downward spiral into social isolation and for over 10 million of our seniors, the onset of dimentia.
THE BEGINNING: When we first started talking about how to empower our unhoused and Senior brothers and sisters to regain their positive life attitudes, develop an income stream or find a job and help them move into permanent housing that they could afford, we had few answers and poorly written questions.
That situation soon turned into the greatest word debate any of us had ever been involved. Therefore our first important Milestone
was the discovery of a code to synthesize basic questions into directional/probing lie detectors.
What does that even mean? Ok, let’s enjoy an example.
We wrote down an area of interest or concern that we all had expressed. We then were able to remember a question asked of us from a case manager, social worker or other of the hundreds of staff employed by the large non profits so eagerly exhausting us in filling out endless forms and surveys. The most memorable of all was a question that we had each heard many times on the street.
“WHAT DO YOU NEED?
Not such a bad question, right? A most horrible, disastrous and dangerous question is this one. Why? we suddenly discovered sitting down and eating lunch at BitterLake Community Center that any question we asked to obtain necessary information resulting in the creation of a vital program for our unhoused and senior neighbors must be asked while being totally absorbed in the CONTEXT of their ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT both physical and mental. ASK AN UNHOUSED PERSON WHO IS COLD OR HUNGRY OR SLEEPY WHAT THEY NEED? Answer- A blanket or food or sleeping pills. We don’t think or live in any positive future. We are deeply involved in surviving TODAY….
JUNE 07, 2014
Possibly the most important discovery and standout single day in our history. Contextual and historical phrasing will govern all of our research in the future.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO GET OFF THE STREET PERMANENTLY?