SFist Tonight
Week Around the Ists
SFist Tonight
Despite the, err, soap opera that happened at City Hall, Project Homeless Connect is still happening. Tomorrow, there'll be another one at the Bill Graham Civic Center, from 9-3 PM. We doubt this time around, we'll see photos of Gavin washing people's feet (sadly, we couldn't find a photo of it) or awkward meetings that get reported in breathless detail by the Chronicle.
If you want to help out, head on over the site and choose a project you'd like to work on. Among other things, you can do street outreach, give legal help, serve food, or enter data on each person who comes in.
So go out and do a mitzvah.
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So, is project Homeless Connect just a PR event, designed to make non-homeless people feel good about how generous they are with their time and energy - or does it actually help the homeless?
From reports I've read from the homeless, it's little more than the former.
Anyone have experience with this?
^ It's both. As much as I like helping people for the sake of helping people, the random one-time volunteers who gunk up the system have turned me off from the event. I definitely won't be in attendance tomorrow. Having to wade through gossiping co-workers (whose corporation gave them a day off to help) and high schoolers (whose school did the same) to help lead someone to a long line for services that may not have room for them is discouraging and frustrating.
Before the "Volunteering is Sexy" campaign, they did, "Give a day to SF", the idea being that if everyone in the city volunteered one day out of the year, we'd all do a whole lot of good. Now, remember how useful you were on your first day of any job. Multiply that by a few hundred volunteers. Masses of ineffectual volunteers don't do much good at all. Even just the free lunches they're served for 'working' at PHC could benefit homeless people far more, fer instance.
It's definitely better than nothing, but it's closer to a band-aid than a full cure for the problems.