Homeless Veteran Update
I first had the idea to research homeless veterans over dinner with my mom, where we discussed what she was up to at work. She works for the Allegheny Conference on Community Development in Pittsburgh, and she told me about the company’s latest initiatives to work with homeless veterans. Specifically, they work with placing veterans in jobs and helping them best represent their specific skills and talents to their employers. It was really interesting to hear about how much Pittsburgh has been doing in recent years to help veterans.
One issue I had initially was with deciding whether to tackle the nation-wide problem of homeless veterans, or simply focus on the Pittsburgh region. I decided that since I have more resources available about Pittsburgh, I would keep my focus there. It has also been difficult for me to figure out who my audience would be. I would like to provide information that would help homeless veterans themselves, but the concern there is that they may not have access to the internet. I think I am going to target the general public and spread awareness about this issue, as well as show how they can help those in need.
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I think your decision to narrow the focus to Pittsburgh area veterans is a great one. Pittsburgh is a heavily populated East Coast city and I’m sure there’s an abundance of not only veterans, but also an abundance of homeless veterans not happy with the way they are being taken care of by the government. Pittsburgh is also an extremely diverse city so the differing views on the issue will be interesting to see. For example, I remember during orientation that we were told not to give money to the homeless or else they do not leave. Just the other day, however, I saw a charity website dedicated to the blind guy who sits outside Rite Aid on Forbes, across from Pamela’s.
I think your audience can be literally the entire population of Pittsburgh, especially the urban working class because these are the people who pass by the homeless veterans everyday. Many of these people regularly give money to the homeless men and women, but many do not. Regardless, it would be an interesting point of discussion for the people that live here. Students can also be a good audience because students are constantly looking for ways to get involved with the community, and providing aid for homeless veterans is a way to do that.