director of the curbside Chronicle at
the homeless liance in oklahoma city and
i’m here to talk to you about how when
it comes to tackling big issues like
homelessness that i truly believe that
one person and one organization and one
interaction can be meaningful and make a
difference in people’s lives and so when
I work in Oklahoma City and on any given
night there are 1500 people experiencing
homelessness and that’s just one night
throughout the entire year our
population of homeless looks more like
seven thousand individuals and that’s
sleeping outside or in shelters that
doesn’t include the couch homeless
individuals who are moving from home to
home but don’t have a residence of their
own and so when we talk about numbers
like seven thousand and fifteen hundred
on one night it can seem overwhelming
and it can seem like a problem that’s
way too big to tackle and so it can
paralyze us right um but my story I
guess doesn’t just start with one person
I it includes two people my husband and
I and when we were in college um he’s
now my husband then he wasn’t but when
we were we found out about something
called Street papers um Street papers
are publications like magazines and
newspapers that employ people who are
homeless and at risk of homelessness by
giving them a job through sales think of
like modern day Newsies kinda selling
newspapers in public spaces and so we
heard of this idea and we had really
been talking about the issue of
homelessness that we were passionate
about and in being discouraged about
driving around Oklahoma City and
constantly seeing people panhandling on
the side of the road and understanding
that individuals have barriers that make
traditional employment difficult but
that that’s what individuals in that
situation had to turn to and when we
found out about street papers it was
like voila I mean here is something that
meets a person where they are and gives
them a tool to transition forward and
move forward and so we had this idea and
we decided to pursue it and we decided
to see if it could work in Oklahoma City
and so that really started us
acknowledging that as individuals we
could have thought of a million reason
as to why we were inadequate one being
our age and experience and all of that
but but we knew that we had drive and we
knew that we were determined and
passionate and so we approached the
homeless Alliance and we talked to them
about about this idea and seeing if they
being a nonprofit that had it already
existed for a decade thought that it
could be something that could work and
luckily they were open to it and said
give it a try but whenever we started
off it very much was an idea a concept
of saying hey this has been proven in
hundreds of other cities around the
world to work but what will this like
look like in Oklahoma City and so it
involved a lot of us driving around and
trying to recruit vendors and um and
just getting our first publication now
and in small things like that but it
started to grow and it became not just
our friends and family buying magazines
but other people and then their friends
and their family until we started
selling thousands of magazines a month
and so we went from kind of like this
one idea in this one person to people in
our case starting this thing to becoming
a real organization and and mobilizing
and bringing more people on board in at
the homeless liance we have a saying
that we use called rallying the home the
community to end homelessness and it’s
this idea that homelessness is a
community-wide issue and so it’s going
to take a community-wide effort to see
its end and one organization by itself
isn’t going to solve that curbside we’re
not going to solve it in
entirety shelters aren’t going to solve
it in its entirety feeds aren’t going to
and solve it in its entirety but
whenever we work together and we
collaborate we can make a really big
difference and individual organizations
and ideas can make a difference in the
idea of creating something new and
approaching these social problems when a
new way is important and so curbside
became beyond an idea into an
organization but my favorite part about
curbside isn’t it is the fact that it’s
made up of multiple interactions and
that’s how we find our success and so
you could think you know well me buying
a magazine from one person of what does
that really do to solve the issue of
homelessness how can two dollars to one
person you know make a difference but
the idea is that it adds up and that
through these multiple interactions
through these thousands of interactions
a simple idea can become really powerful
and we’ve seen that with curbside this
past year 19 of our vendors were able to
move in the housing and overcome over
200 years of homelessness that they’d
experienced combined and that was
because individuals like you and like me
made the decision to make that one small
purchase but they added up thousands and
thousands of times to make a real impact
and not just in the lives of our vendors
but in the lives of the individual
customers as well whenever our vendors
sell magazines they’re selling a product
that they’re also helping contribute to
the curbside Chronicle as a street paper
has articles written by the homeless
about experiencing homelessness and also
about other social content and so our
vendors are contributing to each issue
that they’re selling and when they sell
that to a person you’re getting a
product where you can have your eyes
open to something that maybe you’ve
never experienced or don’t know a lot
about
in and with that that equal interaction
that equal transaction it gives people
from two different walks of life a
reason to interact and a reason to break
down kind of socially isolating walls
that exist in our society before
curbside um a lot of individuals would
choose not to interact with someone that
they saw experiencing homelessness
because maybe it felt uncomfortable and
they didn’t know how to approach a
person in that situation what to say and
so there’s this barrier that existed but
by giving individuals a product to sell
a product that they can have a simple
conversation about it breaks down some
of that fear and it brings people
together people that normally wouldn’t
interact and from that we can really
learn about other individuals and their
situations and ultimately create change
for the long run and so I really believe
that you can have something that is a
simple idea that then with success
becomes a real organization and through
multiple interactions that people can
make a difference and so in your lives
I’m sure that you have different issues
that you are passionate about and
problems that that you would like to see
alleviated in this world and in your
communities and so I would just
encourage you to know that you know as
one person you can be powerful in making
change thank you so much [Applause]