big week!

A lot will happen this week in terms of my homelessness exploration. It began with a newfound sense of despair because my BBHC (Big Bend Homeless Coalition) volunteer application had been in for a week and no reply. At Stephanie Shepherd’s suggestion (Deputy Director of BBHC), I e-mailed the two volunteer volunteer coordinators (sic) requesting that I could have a one-on-one volunteer orientation session rather than wait for the next group session on June 19th, although now that’s not so far away. It had been a while and I was losing hope. Also I decided to have a look at Talgov.com to find what the local government is doing. You can find relevant pages by pasting into Google ‘homeless site:talgov.com’ without the quotes. I find a brief description of the “Mayor’s initiative” for homelessness research. So I send them an e-mail asking “Are the results posted online?” “What are your conclusions?” etc. The reply:

Our Solution:
Thank you for your inquiry to AskTalgov.
Your inquiry has been forwarded to staff with the City’s Community Development Department, so they may respond directly to you regarding your questions. You may also wish to review the website maintained by the Big Bend Homeless Coalition at: http://www.bigbendhc.org/ .

Later I receive from someone else (the staff member),

Dear Ms. Rashad, I am forwarding your request for information to Ms. Stephanie Shepherd, the assistant director of the Big Bend Homeless Coalition. The Coalition along with the Mayor’s office facilitated the workgroup responsible for compiling a final report on ending homelessness.

Ms. Shepherd, as noted below, Ms. Rashad is interested in obtaining information about the task force and any initiatives or products issued by the task force. Thanks for your assistance with this matter.

[Holliday, Patricia]

Great! So I just made a big huge capital circle (heh heh). I quickly e-mailed Ms. Shepherd telling her what had happened and not to worry about it. She thought it was funny like I did, but decided to set up a meeting with me, her, and Kim Freeman, director of the BBHC! Holy crap! I made it to a meeting all the way to the top… wow. I think Ms. Shepherd figured I would quit running around asking different people for the same thing if she just pulled me in so I’m working on making a large bunch of questions. I wasn’t expecting this and feel I’m going in empty-handed. I still know very little about homelessness. At the least, I want to know the big picture structure of homelessness care in Tallahassee, so I have something to present to the high schools I go to when encouraging them to fundraise and volunteer for the BBHC. That’s big thing one.

Big thing two is that one of the volunteer coordinators got back to me to schedule a meeting. Maybe at Ms. Shepherd’s request?

I’ve been speaking with TEAM and I may not be able to work with them since they are an organization of constituent religious congregations, none of which I am a member of. But that’s no big deal.

I need to schedule those two meetings and prepare. What to ask? Geez… I guess I’m almost in.

Closing remarks: I’ve found a wonderful community of homelessness enthusiasts on WordPress, mostly people ‘high up’ in their organizations. So whoever you are, if you read this please leave a comment or message me. Especially if you work with the homeless or are from the Tallahassee area! By the way, ‘Capital Circle’ is a major road encompassing Tallahassee, and Rashad is a guy’s name. And I am a Mr. Time to send some thank you e-mails and schedule some meetings!

Cheers.