On Tuesday, April 15th, Sam and I had the opportunity to educate and promote the issues of hunger and homelessness to the members of Alpha Xi Omicron and their friends. We had an impressive turnout of about 15 people and were pleased to see the sorority members attend with friends. Through our presentation, we hoped to spark new opportunities to attack this important issue through the community service pillar that this sorority and the rest of the Greek Life community hold dear. Our goal was not only to raise awareness of this societal issue, but also to motivate more action towards a solution starting with the university’s organizations.
Our presentation began with gaging our audience’s knowledge about what they believed homelessness to be and if it they considered it an individual or societal problem. By using a PowerPoint presentation, videos, books, and other materials we were able to give them a well-rounded overview of what this course hunger and homelessness is and what it was that we learned about.
The governmental barrier that the issue of homelessness is up against was the most upsetting to our audience. They voiced arguments that there is all this government action that they have heard and or read about. We used materials from the course to give them some answers. In just discussing these issues within the larger picture, we hoped that it would further motivate a willingness to become more active. However, what truly motivated our audience was the second part of our presentation that revolved around promoting awareness, a taste of our internship experiences, and solutions in current practice.
Since our main goal was to inform the sorority of an issue that they promote awareness and action, we showed them a video summarizing the Pilion Trust Chairty’s creative F*ck the Poor campaign as an example of a way to not only spread awareness, but also to show the problem surrounding society. We emphasized through this video that creativity is key in grabbing the attention of people who would otherwise ignore the homelessness issue.
At the end of our presentation, we both hoped that we had provided our audience with at least an ounce of the knowledge that this course has provided us and that through teaching the Alpha Xi Omicron sisterhood, the awareness of the hunger and homelessness issue in America will spread to other University of Redlands Greek and non- Greek organizations. If we have learned anything from this class, it is that awareness is the first step in addressing any issue and that is what we tried to emphasize. Our goal was to give Alpha Xi Omicron the tools to promote hunger and homelessness just as they promote awareness for RAINN and other important issues and hope that it was enough to not only make them care, but make them act. Just like the F*ck the Poor campaign slogan states, “We know you care, please care enough to give”, we want them to take it one step further and just act.
Educating is just the start in this fight against hunger and homelessness. Hopefully Sam and I have impacted and showed the reality to these lovely ladies and friends just as professor Jim Spickard has done.