My project gathers like-minded young people to bring hope and opportunities for rough sleepers in our community. My goals are to 1. listen to individual needs, 2. change perspectives of students towards rough sleepers, 3. build long-term partnership relations with charities.
The project is implemented in three steps. In the first month, I will focus on research on the challenges that local rough sleepers face by conducting interviews. This will deepens our understanding in first-person the true hardships and barriers they face, rather than simple biases and sympathy that our instincts direct us towards. Then, I will organise and host simulation workshops for students. The workshops are open to everyone, but mainly targeted to students in campus. In the workshop, I share our findings on the situation of rough sleeping in our community. Then, I will bring our participants to a safe location for a rough sleeping simulation of 30 minutes. Afterwards, we conduct a reflection sessions on the exoerience.
Finally, me and my groupmates will have established connections with local charities as well as individuals receiving help. My aim is to secure these long term relationships to encourage participants to continue giving back to the community, instead of seeing this as a one-off approach.