Home Free Helps Homeless with Technology and Social Media
Social media and technology can be used for more than chatting with your peeps, sharing links and cool tools. It can be used to mend the social fabric which ties us all together. WiFi wonderful.
Home Free Organization is a non-profit initiative to eradicate homelessness in urban environments through the provision of free wireless internet, social networking and resource allotment.
We take donated bread trucks which have come off route and add donated computers and hardware to create mobile wireless access hubs for homeless individuals to utilize for finding family, jobs, resources and ways off the street.
The goal is simple: Provide a resource for the homeless which will allow them to find ways off the street. Of course there are many who prefer the streets to a 9-5 and home life, but for those who are stuck and cannot find there way, Home Free will provide the tools to try.
We give every visitor an email address to be used for networking and contact. We provide a focused set of search engines geared toward geneology, people searching, available jobs and other resources available to homeless individuals.
Finding the Home Free Truck will be easy, as we will be providing the streets with an 800 number that can be called from any public phone to give the exact location of the truck. It could be at Union Square in Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn.
HomeFree is the brainchild of a fellow blogger and photographer, Justin Farrow. justiNYC. Justin is a creative, an artist, a fellow with a big imagination to go with his big heart. He coined the word HomeFree because the term “homeless”made him “cringe”. ( it was added it to the Urban dictionary becauses he thought it rude to call someone a homeless person when all they really are is homefree.) I love the artist at work.
Here’s what HomeFree is doing:
We are in the process of recruiting professionals from many different fields such as psychology, drug and alcohol treatment and social sciences such as sociology and of course anthropology. In addition, many volunteers that have stepped up have backgrounds in hair styling, fashion and culinary. When an individual comes to us in need of help finding a job, we not only teach them how and where to search, we find them clothes to wear to an interview, cut their hair for them, take headshots and help them actually get that job. We provide them with a mailing address and an email address and in many cases, connect them with one of the services that are offered for providing phones and voicemail.
Please pass this story along. Heck, print the flyer and pass it around.
[tags] homefree, homeless, charity, technology, social media, justin farrow [/tags]
