Work at a Shelter Last year I took part in an active community outreach at a shelter for five hours in Skid Row slum in Los Angeles. This helped me to connect with the people in the area and learn their way of living, understand their immediate needs and the problems that they face in their living environment. What is observed from the experience? I took my time to make my observation in my study and noticed several things about people living in Skid Row area. I visited the area from 8 O’clock in the morning up to 12 o’clock noon. It is not such a pleasant site at first. I am first met by the sight of drunken people staggering in an unspecified direction. Some lay down on the floor of pavements looking dirty and unkempt. Majority of them are street children between the age of five and twenty five years. I presume that they are most probably homeless or having been abandoned by their parents and pushed to the streets to find a living. There are both male and female genders; they seem to coexist closely without any dispute at all. Those on the streets are carrying some polythene bags that you can hardly tell what is inside, but I presume that it is either a material to lay on during the night in the streets and food that they gather from the streets. As I pass through the dark alleys of Skid Row, I tend to attract a lot …show more content…
About five minutes of my watch on the mushrooming slum, I see several papers fly from the squeezed houses into air landing on whatever places found as target. When they become really common that is when I realize that these are flying toilets. The area has inadequate sanitary facilities and this is the best way they can disposed their faecal discharge. The drainage itself is poor and people are really finding it hard to walk through the
In the ethnography With No Direction Home: Homeless Youth on the Road and in the Streets, she combines her understanding of her previous researches with her current study in order to enculturate street youth behaviour. Finkelstein attempts to answer two distinctive questions about street youth. First, she tries to understand what occurrences result in youth being on the streets? Secondly, once youths are on the streets what do they experience? In answering these questions, Finkelstein attempts to address the lack of “information on the lives of street kids” (Finkelstein, 2005, preface) that is available to the general public. She conducts ethnographic interviews, in order to analyze the similarities and differences between the youth’s backgrounds. The author utilizes various ethnographic methods in an attempt to accomplish her goal. Although ...
Many service projects have had an impact on my life, but the significant one is the time that our group put together Blessing Bags. The Blessing Bags were bags put together for homeless people. This project had an impact on my life because at one point in time, my family struggled. We did not have a stable home and we had to continue movie because of the living expenses. It is very difficult to buy many products that are needed for personal hygiene, especially if someone does not have a stable home. There are many people that live in the streets and it breaks my heart. Whenever I see homeless people, I give them what I can. Although my family did not become homeless, I could not imagine living in the streets without any food, clothing, or products
Mark Peterson’s 1994 photograph, Image of Homelessness, compares the everyday life of the working class to the forgotten life of the lowest class in society. In the image, the viewer can see a troubled homeless man wrapped in a cocoon of standard manipulated 12in by 12in cardboard boxes and yarn. The yarn is what is keeping the man and box tied to the red bench. This bench has chipped paint and is right in front of a black fence. Underneath the bench is dirt and debris from the dead fall leaves. The center focal point is the homeless man on the bench. He is the focal point because he is the greatest outsider known to man. Behind this man is vibrant life. There is pulsating people crossing the clean street, signs of life from all the advertising on store windows, families walking and blurred cars filled with
I also walked with the Purplestride.org fund raising to end Cancer. I volunteered my free time cooking and feeding the homeless around San Diego with friends and classmates while attending San Diego Continuous Education Program. After completing my nursing degree, I am looking forward to the opportunity to reach out to the multitude in the underserved community.
Even with the daily struggle faced by youth in obtaining shelter and homelessness becoming a reality for a growing number of Canadians, Canada, with its high quality of life is one country that has always had a global long-standing reputation. This paper will be working towards giving the reader a better understanding with regards to homeless youth. It will be focusing on the reasons why they leave home, their lives on the street and steps they are trying to take to be able to leave the streets. An important finding from this research suggests, “the street youth population is diverse, complex, and heterogeneous”. According to Karabanow, made up of a number of subcultures including hardcore street-entrenched young people, squatters, group home kids, child welfare kids, soft-core twinkles, runaways, throwaways, refugees and immigrants is the generic term ‘street youth’.
The sidewalk is a social structure for the people who work and live in it. They are mentors for each other. They play the same role of self-direction and psychological fulfillment of a formal job or family for example; where the society is shrunken on that one sidewalk. They form an informal social organization and social control so they can survive against the outer social system; meanwhile, this social organization organizes property rights and division of labor. Although their life seems deviant, they still practice conventional social practices and norms. Although it might seem that these men are engaged in random behavior, yet there is an organized interaction of norms and goals, and a shared collective self-consciousness from having a shared common history.
Skid Row, a fifty block radius of poverty has an extremely interesting history. Located in downtown Los Angeles, Skid Row is filled with drug users, predominantly people of color and
Skid Row dates back to the mid 1880’s-1890’s when the railroads were built and where they ended. The large agricultural fields east of downtown soon gave way to more industrial uses, which then attracted a predominantly large male population that came on trains for employment from the railroads, or predominantly transient agricultural sectors. This atmosphere sprouted small hotels, transitional living spaces back then, that now ...
Los Angeles, people think of movie stars and great attraction spots, not Skid Row. Skid Row sits in downtown Los Angeles. It is the nation’s biggest population of homeless people living and sleeping on public sidewalks. Over 2,000 men and women camp under tarps that span 50 city blocks. It’s not surprising that these streets sanitary conditions are appalling. On any given street you will witness see people shooting up, urinating, and fighting. This location also has a high number of mentally ill individuals. It is a predator’s paradise. Police officers are not popular on skid row and many would rather do anything else. An officer with the Los Angeles Police Department has found his calling on one of the hardest beats, Skid Row.
The stories that comprise the voices of Skid Row are unique, despite their common thread of homelessness. From the severely mentally ill to the merely down on their luck, the population of Skid Row widely varies, as are their chances of getting of the streets. Let’s examine a sampling of the personal stories of Skid Row residents. From these stories, I have seen a small glimpse of everyday life and the struggles of the Skid Row community.
For my twelve hours of community service I went to the Boys & Girls club in Erie, Pennsylvania. While at the Boys and Girls club I had noticed a variety of different things in regards to the population
Volunteer at the Sweetwater Senior Center Health Fair. I provided information to the seniors via brochures and by speaking to them about topics that affect their health and access to health resources. I spoke to them about depression including the symptoms, preventative measures, and treatment options. We listened to the specific concerns of those around us and helped conduct the fair as smoothly as possible. There were a lot more people than originally anticipated so I ran out of brochures and my station became verbal by explaining the disease to the seniors rather than having them take a brochure. This entire health fair was conducted in Spanish since that is the primary language spoken by the population.
Another service that I have done has been to volunteer at the West Campus Hospital gift shop. It was a great experience for me; if I had the time I would make the effort to volunteer again. For people that is good at socializing with others and love organizing I would recommend volunteering at the gift shop.
I do many community service events with my sorority. Just this week we did an event where we all came together and made Valentine's for men and women in the military. Although it was a small act of kindness, it hopefully will give them a smile and make their day a little better. It helped me appreciate all that I had because it reminded me of the fact that not everyone has their family with them for days like this of joy and love.
I volunteered at East Parkside Nursing Home through my church 's mentoring program. At first, I was somewhat uncomfortable volunteering at a nursing home because my great-grandfather, among many others, was mistreated in a nursing home. But, as the day went on and we engaged in activities with the residents, I eventually calmed down and got into the smooth of things. We had one-on-one contact with the seniors, and we learned about their lives and families. One of the seniors was a veteran who fought in the Vietnam War and he told all of the volunteers a few short war stories. For several residents, their families rarely visited them, so they genuinely appreciated the volunteers spending time with them. Later, we made holiday cards and sang Christmas carols for the senior citizens. They seemed so elated and pleased, which made me feel so fulfilled that I could make someone 's day by doing something so