Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week
Kylie Gilliams
Issue date: 4/24/09 Section: Features
"When I lost my job and house I thought I'd lost everything," said speaker John Harris at the Faces of Homelessness Panel on April 15. "I didn't realize I had something more to lose, and that was my dignity."
The panel was one of the events that made up Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The week kicked off with the Hunger Banquet on Monday, and continued with other events such as a discussion on hate crimes against the homeless, a food and clothing drive, and a table lunch discussion.
The purpose of the week was to not only raise awareness of these issues, but to get students motivated to end them.
"The fact that there are over 1,000 students in Guilford county who are homeless, the fact that the winter emergency shelters closed on April 1st leaving many homeless people without anywhere to go, the fact that there are people who resort to sleeping in alleyways, the woods, and in the parks - we should be protesting and screaming because of the inhumanity of the situation of homelessness," said sophomore and event organizer Juliet Carrington in an e-mail interview. "There are more animal shelters than there are homeless shelters. Something is not right."
The panel, led by Michael O'Neill, director of the Faces of Homelessness Speakers Bureau, aimed to personalize and humanize the issue of homelessness.
"After this, in a couple of weeks, you don't remember the statistics I tell you, you remember the stories and people you meet," said O'Neill.
However, O'Neill did share some startling statistics: 3.5 million people experienced homelessness in the United States in 2008, 1.5 million of which were children.
The panel featured three men and one woman, all of whom were formerly or currently homeless. One by one, David Harris, Tim Hutchinson, Tonda Osteen and John Harris shared the stories of their paths into and out of homelessness.
"Homeless people were familiar to me, but though I saw them, I didn't really see them as people," said David Harris, a resident of Washington, D.C. "I didn't associate with the homeless; I didn't make any effort to find out what they were like as human beings. I believed they were different from the people I knew and therefore it was okay to (treat them like that). I believed that right up until I became one of them."
The panel was one of the events that made up Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week. The week kicked off with the Hunger Banquet on Monday, and continued with other events such as a discussion on hate crimes against the homeless, a food and clothing drive, and a table lunch discussion.
The purpose of the week was to not only raise awareness of these issues, but to get students motivated to end them.
"The fact that there are over 1,000 students in Guilford county who are homeless, the fact that the winter emergency shelters closed on April 1st leaving many homeless people without anywhere to go, the fact that there are people who resort to sleeping in alleyways, the woods, and in the parks - we should be protesting and screaming because of the inhumanity of the situation of homelessness," said sophomore and event organizer Juliet Carrington in an e-mail interview. "There are more animal shelters than there are homeless shelters. Something is not right."
The panel, led by Michael O'Neill, director of the Faces of Homelessness Speakers Bureau, aimed to personalize and humanize the issue of homelessness.
"After this, in a couple of weeks, you don't remember the statistics I tell you, you remember the stories and people you meet," said O'Neill.
However, O'Neill did share some startling statistics: 3.5 million people experienced homelessness in the United States in 2008, 1.5 million of which were children.
The panel featured three men and one woman, all of whom were formerly or currently homeless. One by one, David Harris, Tim Hutchinson, Tonda Osteen and John Harris shared the stories of their paths into and out of homelessness.
"Homeless people were familiar to me, but though I saw them, I didn't really see them as people," said David Harris, a resident of Washington, D.C. "I didn't associate with the homeless; I didn't make any effort to find out what they were like as human beings. I believed they were different from the people I knew and therefore it was okay to (treat them like that). I believed that right up until I became one of them."
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