I spent my morning at PS 270 with a group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders who signed up for the Photography Explorers enrichment class. I don’t know all the details of how the program started, I just signed up through New York Cares’ website for the project. I arrived, without a camera of course, early and awaited Francine the coordinator.
When Francine arrived, she briefly explained what was going to happen – take the kids outside with cameras, let them do their thing, then come back inside to print out a single photo. During the explanation, kids and additional volunteers began to filter in. By ten after ten, we were outside on the playground taking photos of kids on the swings, on the playground gear, pretty much anywhere.
I worked with Crystal. She led me around and took photos of me doing silly stuff on the monkey bars. I, in turn, tried to get her to take photos of flowers or photos of people at interesting angles. She wasn’t interested. She got some great shots and I got some great shots.
Just before we headed in, I showed her the fountain. I hit the on button to release a small stream of water. I told her to take a photo. She missed the stream a few times, so I showed her how to time it. A couple other people came over to have fun with the fountain, too.
The girl, Mioshi, said she really enjoyed taking photos. She thought she was going to be a photographer when she grew up. When she printed out her photo, it was of a woman pushing a shopping cart on the sidewalk. She snapped the shot while the woman was unaware, so it was a very honest expression on the woman’s face – determination and tiredness.
Mioshi titled her photo album page with “Mioshi Documents Brooklyn”. I don’t think of 3rd, 4th, or 5th graders using a word like document, but she did. I was impressed. She went on to describe the woman and where she met her.
The last time I volunteered with kids, I was trying to read to kids in a domestic violence shelter. Not the best first experience. I haven’t really wanted to work with kids since then. After this morning, I have at least one positive experience to balance the reading experience..
I participated in the New York City annual survey of the homeless. It’s called Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, or HOPE 2009. You can read more about it on the HOPE 2009 website, but in a nutshell, the survey takes a point-in-time look at homelessness on the streets of New York City. It gives the mayor a way to track progress toward his goal to reduce the homeless population by two-thirds in 2009.
My piece of the puzzle was to go to Coney Island and walk with a group of folks, who also volunteered, to canvas three sections of Brooklyn. They gave us maps with the routes we needed to walk and an orientation to the methodology for approaching and interviewing people on the streets. After the interview, we would need to decide whether we think the person is homeless.
We had a room full of people, probably about 50 volunteers and about 30 or so police. Because of the area my group was assigned, we didn’t need police. We might have, actually, but not because it was a rough neighborhood. Quite the contrary.
When we arrived at the first location, the BMW’s, Lexus’s, and Mercedes, in driveways no less, all gave a clue that we would be the ones out of place. No homeless to be seen, but the cops on patrol did look stare at us a couple times wondering why we were on the street at midnight.
That’s the other thing, the survey started at 12:15am and ended when we were done or 4am, which ever came first. It was a chilly January night, so you can imagine that we were anxious to talk to people or get our survey done.
The first survey block led to no encounters. Upon arrival at the second, the houses, their condition, and the kind of car sitting out front, or in the drive way, again said we wouldn’t find homeless people out here. There were very few people on the street at all.
It didn’t take long for us to realize we were on one of the control group areas. If we were to find homeless people in a rich neighborhood, you know the City would have real problems. As it was, we chatted amongst ourselves. One of the volunteers was a computer programmer, another ran a homeless outreach unit, and the fourth ran a marketing business. All very nice folks.
We ended the evening after having walked about six or so miles according to my trusty pedometer. I went home and promptly crashed.
I’ll be interested to see the results of this year’s survey. I don’t know how long it takes to crunch the data and massage the results, but I’ll make a second post. In the mean time, it felt good to help the City, even if I personally didn’t see anyone to help.
This week, I began a temporary job with New York Cares. I’m the Warehouse Coordinator for their Winter Coat Drive. For the month of December, New York Cares collects coats from all across the City. This year is the 20th year of the coat drive. Last year, the collected and distributed over 90,000 coats. This year, we hope to do better, but we’ll see how the economy works its hand at New Yorkers’ generosity.
To collect the coats, they have set up collection points at police precincts in all the boroughs as well as the transportation terminals – Penn Station, Grand Central, Port Authority. To get coats from the precincts and transportation terminals, UPS and Avant pick up and deliver bags of coats every day. Individuals and other organizations can also drop off coats at the warehouse – 250 Hudson St.
The building on Hudson St used to house a printer. Now it’s being renovated for office space. We have a dusty floor all to ourselves. It is in this place that we break down the deliveries, sort them into mens, womens, kids, and infants coats, then rebag them – five coats to a bag – and put them in a big pile. The coats are given to agencies that submitted applications to distribute coats. It’s a first applied, first served situation. We start calling the first applicants to come pick up coats for their works.
Many of the agencies are churches. It’s unfortunately there are so many applicants – indicating the great need in New York – but it’s great that we can help out.
So far, we’ve sorted about 300 mens coats, 360 womens, 60 kids, and 30 infants. The bags of delivered, unsorted coats have piled up, awaiting the tender labors of volunteers who want to help sort them. That process begins next week. It should be good. In addition to the bags from the police precincts and the transport terminals, Sing Sing Prison made a few too many coats for the prison guards. We have about 1850 additional unisex coats to handout.
Although the first week is slow, I’m told that it gets hectic and crazy. I enjoyed the laid back first week and I look forward to some of the ferocious intensity that characterized the early days of Hands On Gulf Coast life.
