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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Day Shelter issues-a first look

I recently became involved with a day shelter.  Well, involved sounds a little more romantic than the facts establish.  Lets say I recently was drafted to assist one.  A day shelter is a homeless shelter that doesn't allow people to stay overnight.  That's my definition.  I think coming up with a better definition would go a long way.
I would say they provide job hunting resources and some meals, but apparently this one just stopped serving food which I think is a bad idea.  What is worse than waking up cold, coming in to take a shower and make some calls for a job and being hungry the whole time?  Anyway, here are some of my ideas on this:
1) There doesn't appear to be a "day shelter" association where resources and ideas can be exchanged. This means setting up a web site programming thing, but this could be canned through several free or near free off the shelf products.  The national association of day shelters fits in very well with my book "China's Weaponized Economy" and I wonder if I should explore this conceptually, but that is another issue.  My recent sally into crowd funding for the concept of overthrowing congress is growing moss instead of momentum, but remains a target whenever time allows.
2)  Set up a stale donut and pastry pick up thing to take care of the no-breakfast/lunch problem.  Maybe everyone would disagree with this, but it just seems like a good idea to me.
3) I have my own art project and by coincidence the day shelter has this big art thing.  This creates a conundrum as I try to decide whether to bring his up or just pursue it separately.
4) It was mentioned that there are these excursions to "round up" homeless people and do something charitable in connection with them.  I am fairly certain this is a low risk (but by no means non-risk) proposition involving getting out in the cold, wet, hot, etc environment to do some good for those less fortunate, but I have my reservations about volunteering although that was almost suggested.  Perhaps this is one of those "territorial" things where those doing it would want to keep out others, but there was the implied threat that just the opposite was the point.
5) I need to get the agenda.  I suspect when I show up to my first meeting armed with all of my ideas, I will be told that they've already been done and perhaps be given some mundane task which I shudder to even consider since cerebral dealing with the downtrodden is much easier than actually laying hands on them.

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