Their big focus is, right now, the election season. I don't know the statistics, but there are many many homeless people in America and the Philly area that don't know their voter rights or just aren't registered. This could be because of a variety of things, some including apathy, but most for the simple reason that they don't have an address (hence, homeLESS).
Last week we went to a Red Cross shelter to register people to vote. Ryan Marotta is our Service Site Coordinator, so he planned for us to go and just talk to the people there and let them know that if they haven't registered, they can and probably should. We registered about 6 people to vote, which was pretty good in my opinion.
One of the challenges that I had though was a conversation we had with one of the men there. He was telling us a lot about his life, and for the first time ever I heard someone that was legitimately PROUD that he had only worked "ten days in his life". He was bragging to us about how he used legal loopholes to scam the government, and he told us some other unsavory stories. He was actually a really funny, nice guy, but there was definitely something about the conversation that left me feeling uneasy.
Especially because this man is registering to vote!!
The other people were great and expressed a lot of happiness in being able to vote in this election. They were afraid that if they moved before election day then they wouldn't be able to vote, but we were told that they could return to the district of where they registered or whatever.
Anyway, it was a really great time and I definitely saw the merit. This week we're going to a Fair Trade coffee shop. I'll let Ryan or one of the other volunteers blog about that one!!
--Sal
P.S. Here's an interesting chart about each state's policies on homeless voting.
http://www.veteransparty.us/homeless.htm
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