How to help with homeless mobile phones to combat loneliness
Ben Hughes and Roger Collins were initially joint. Mr. Hughes is a fan of the euriols, while Mr. Collins supports giants. One of them moved to San Francisco to work for an emerging health care company; The other came to the city’s health care services. Mr. Hughes lived in an apartment. Mr. Collins lived in a shelter.
The two have become unlikely friends. They used the exchanging messengers from different aspects of life, which were seen from the same sidewalks in San Francisco.
They met through the miracle messages, a non -profit area in the Gulf region that helps people rebuild relationships – and form new messages. Its phone programs crawl with volunteers with people with homelessness in an attempt to relieve social isolation.
Why did we write this
Focus a story
In San Francisco, the approach that provides portable gifts to people who have no shelter – with someone on the other end – helps formulate human connection.
“I learn a lot from Roger’s perspective on San Francisco’s issues more than the media,” says Mr. Hughes in an interview at the San Francisco Public Library. “In fact, he lives with him and sees him every day.”
Next to him, Mr. Collins maneuver the Red Mobility Chair to face Mr. Hughes. “Many people do not understand the meaning of homelessness. Some people do not want to be around
Anti -poverty aid
“The population of California who have no shelter about 200,000 needs the College of Public Health.” Says Hownted Public Health College. “Efforts are like miracle messages It all gives us to be a way to move forward instead of just feeling tired of this challenge. “
The miracle messages started as an experiment in 2014 using “social media for social good”. Something was changed by the founder Kevin Adler, after knowing that his uncle spent 30 years without shelter. Mr. Adler has just finished graduate degrees in sociology at the University of Cambridge in England, when he began to look at homelessness differently and wanted to do something.
He lives in San Francisco, he started holding friendship with the homeless residents and learning their stories. With the permission of people, use Facebook and Instagram to re -connect them with their families, who in many cases spent years searching for them.
The miracle messages were set to combat what Mr. Adler calls the Alami poverty – the idea that poverty occurs when people lack bonds and support from others. The research constantly shows that social isolation and lack of confidence in seeking help is the main contributors to homelessness.
The progress that connects people
By the end of 2024, about 1,000 people were collected with their loved ones through miracle messages. Volunteers are enlisted as digital investigators and awareness workers, publishing online videos and coordinating family reunification or re -submitting them when necessary.
Miracle Friends, which was established in 2020, is currently more than 300 pairs inside the phone program. Mobile phones provide comrades of the homeless, if necessary. It is also a pioneer in a guaranteed basic income program. The displaced participants in the program received $ 750 per month for one year, as part of a $ 2.1 million study led by researchers at the University of Southern California.
Mr. Collins was part of studying the guaranteed income from March 2023 to March 2024. Use money to pay for food and bills. When he had an additional, he sent it to his retired mother, who lives in a living facility with the help of Oregon.
“From forgetting,” says Mr. Adler, the author of the book “We are forgetting, and the role we can:” Through the foundation, through the presence of individuals residing, helping unique individuals, we create closely or understanding among people. ” Play ending homelessness in America. “We are also defending people to understand and sympathize with the reason people are displaced.”
Friendship falsifying dinner
Most of the miracle friends rarely meet in a person, where volunteers can live all over the world. But Mr. Hughes and Mr. Collins have found multiple ways to communicate. After weeks of matching, they started verifying regularly. In the end, they started meeting weekly for dinner. Together, they built a two -year institution.
The first personal meeting of February afternoon was the San Francisco Medical Respite & Sobing, where Mr. Collins was staying. Mr. Hughes brought the sandwiches. Participated in his life traveling from Betsda, Maryland, to Boston, and eventually to San Francisco.
Mr. Collins talked about his upbringing in the northwest of the Pacific, where he grew to love long distances and the open air. He came out of the tenth grade and became homeless at the age of 21. Over the next 32 years, he toured and toured cities along the West Coast. At different times, collect metal scrap for money.
For the largest part, it was alone. Stop asked others to help completely, explaining, “Whenever you need help, people reject you or be disgusting to you, and this would break my heart.”
In August 2024, Mr. Collins managed to secure a studio apartment in a living complex with the help of the former unlike people in The Tenderloin, alive here. “I don’t have to feel lonely anymore. He says:” I am no longer shelter. ”
When he was previously confined to the hospital bed for weeks, Mr. Hughes was visiting and infiltrating the favorite snacks of Mr. Collins after the nurse. “It is not possible to have fun in the hospital room forever and you have no visitors,” says Mr. Hughes. “The nurse was angry with me to bring wrong snacks,” says Mr. Collins.
“If more people see homelessness more through that lens, this will help so much because you will treat him as you do a friend,” says Mr. Hughes. “I think a lot will be done.”