Our Progress and Results

My group’s overall goal in this project for homelessness is to spread awareness through our blogs, social media, petition, and youth voices so that more homeless shelters can be built in NYC. By gaining more followers, views, and likes, we can gain enough people to become involved in this issue so that our blogs and issue can be noticed to make a difference. Overall, throughout the 3 or 4 months we have worked on this project, we have not really achieved our goal on spreading awareness.

I think our project was a fail because my group and I have very little views and likes, and diversity in all our blogs. First off, we have a total of 131 views in total and mostly form USA. The blog in which we had gained the most amount of views was 11; the rest are either 3 or 4. In addition, most of our views are from USA- with 125 views, 2 in Ireland, 2 from United Kingdom, 1 from Bangladesh, and 1 from Hong Kong, China. Lastly, in most of our blogs, we have zero or one like.

The second reason, I thought our project was unsuccessful was because our petition social media posts, and our videos have not a lot lot of views just like our blogs. We gained a total of 12 followers for our petition and about 20 followers on Instagram. This is barely enough to make a difference or be noticed to make a change. If we were to be successful, I think our goal would be to get at least 100 followers in our petition and 200 followers in our social media platforms. In our individual videos we made discussing different subtopics on homelessness, we didn’t get much views or likes on Youtube, social media, or our blogs. Thus, it is not enough to make this project a success.

In conclusion, our project was mostly a fail because of our inability to spread awareness through views, likes, followers, and diversity among our blogs, social media, petition, and videos. Because we can’t  spread awareness, we cannot achieve our end goal of building more homeless shelters around NYC. Next time, my group and I work on a project like this again, I think I can improve by spreading this issue to more social media platforms, and sending an email promoting our issue to our school- BSGE.

Homes For Tomorrow: A Reflective Close

The overall goal of the project, “Homes for Tomorrow” is to raise awareness about just how common homelessness is around the world, specifically here in New York. The goal of the project was not only to inform viewers about the magnitude of the issue, but it was also created as a guide as to what actions we can take to combat homelessness. In my opinion, the project has been quite successful. Although the view counts may not be as high as other projects, it is sufficient as a result of multiple social media platforms being utilized to introduce it.

The project has been more successful than what I had expected to be the outcome. For example, our most viewed blog post on WordPress.com was “The Presentation is Here!”. It had reached a total of 11 views from April 29th to May 5th. This was surprising because I had expected less views out of this since I posted it on Facebook to share with others. I do not particularly have a wide platform on Facebook because other social media I use is more active, so getting 11 views was a big deal to us. To add on, our petition also surprised us with the number of signatures it had acquired. In total, the Homes For Tomorrow organization gained 12 supporters. I personally found this successful judging from the fact that each of us had only posted this petition once a while before the blog was more well-known and familiar to others.

In conclusion, the evidence of our project growing to be successful slowly over time has exceeded our expectations. Initially, we may have been more on the pessimistic side, but after seeing a total of over 100 views, we realized that we had more influence than we thought. Although we only have 12 supporters out of 100, it is a good start. This is also why we had room for improvement regardless. Each of the four of us only used one social media platform to inform others about our project. For example, I have a much more extended platform on Instagram than on Facebook, so that it is something I could have used if I were to do this project all over.

Volunteering to Help the Homeless

There are many organizations and shelters that specifically deals with homelessness. In my previous blogs and presentation, I mentioned that one of the many ways in which we can help the homeless is to volunteer in organizations or shelters. There are many pros and benefits to volunteering. One way in which it can benefit us is that when we are helping the homeless, we are helping the community too. When we are providing a healthier and cleaner environment, we benefit by receiving a better living condition in our community. Not only does it benefit us, but it serves a great deal in helping the homeless. The homeless are receiving good care, food, and social interactions all from your doing. Volunteering benefits both sides without any harm done.

Spreading Our Blogs!

From the beginning of around February up until present May, our blogs have been capturin more views within the three months. We originally started off with one or two views in United States, but now we have gone up to around 119 views in total for all our blogs. In addition, the diversity of our blogs have been increasing too as we gain more viewer in different countries beside United States like Ireland, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong SAR China as shown above. Each and everyday, we are getting closer to our goal of spreading awareness around not only in NYC but in other countries as well. Now that our views have gone up, my group and I hope this achievement will continue enough so that something can be done to help the homeless (such as shelters). Help spread the awareness today by following, liking, and viewing our weekly blogs as well as signing our petition to become a member today! #homesfortomorrow

Homelessness in the Subway

Almost everywhere in NYC, we see vagrant roaming around in search for help. Many of these common places include NYC streets, subway stations, etc. Many NYC citizens travel to work, school, etc through the MTA transit. Based on personal experience, I see many of those who are homeless waiting by a corner of the subway begging for money or food. In spite of this, rarely does anyone take their time and spare a few coins/dollars on those in need. Most either stare or walk past by without considering those around them. In this meme, there are two vagrants sleeping on the floor of the subway covered in cardboards as sheets. In the background, most people are either staring or walking. If we have time to stare, we should have time to help. Help, don’t stare! Spare a few coins, dollars, or food. A little can always make a big difference.

The Advancements

Our progression as a homeless organization has remained stable. However, we have never gotten such a large amount of views in just one day. The presentations we had completed and posted have gotten us much more attention (please view it if you have not by the way, it’d be of great support). We have came to a conclusion that we may need different ideas and concepts to make posts about to gather more views and support. Sp far, these presentations are serving us quite well and we hope to make more progress utilizing more creative ways to reach our audience.

Presented in Depth

There numerous factors that lead to homelessness. In my prior blog post, this video is mentioned, but here is a more in depth discussion about the process of making it as well the information my peers discussed based on the main topic: homelessness. Enjoy!

This presentation of vital information was made possible due Adobe Spark, “an integrated suite of storytelling applications for the mobile and web developed by Adobe Systems.” Every successful outcome usually starts with a plan and this was what I had hoped to achieve. I began from scratch and made an outline of what I wanted to say and what I wanted to show/present visually. Of course, there were some tweaks here and there while making the video because I realized that not everything I wanted to include was possible, which was slightly discouraging, yet not too discouraging. I still finished the video, included my pictures, my narration, my preferred animations and specific themes and I felt satisfied. I hope you enjoyed it by the way!

To add on, my peers also deserve a lot of credit. We had brainstormed different subtopics for our presentations together. They picked topics that were quite interesting. For example, Muhammad, decided to speak upon the numerous homeless shelters available among New York City and other areas. Shirley, on the other hand, shed light on how the population of homelessness had been increasing over the past recent years. Last but not least, Amy chose to inform our audiences on how to help the homeless, small and big ways because every effort counts. Please support them as well.

Remember to comment if you’d like, it would be appreciated.

From “Rags to Riches”

Everyday thousands of people in NYC are being dragged into the homeless community. There are many reasons people become homeless and yet there aren’t enough activities to help them.

In my presentation, I discuss ways in which we can help the homeless in an affordable manner. My goal is to get as much people as possible to become interested in this issue. By doing this, we would be able to decrease homelessness in NYC even if we are not able to stop it. To achieve my goal, I would need to gain as much supporters or followers as possible in this organization so that we can all work together to make this happen.

I completed this presentation through my research and adobe sparks. In one slide I mentioned the issue that many vagrants are facing and in the second slide I discuss possible activities in which we can help. Each of my group members made different presentations on Homelessness. The others did homeless population, reasons people go homeless, and organizations that deal with homelessness. These presentations all relate back to one goal which is to create more shelters in which we can help the homeless.

The Presentation is Here!

Some of you who have read my previous blog posts, may remember the mention of a certain multimedia presentation coming soon. I am pleased to say that it has finally been completed! The video is titled “Why Do People Go Homeless?”. The video sheds light on the factors that cause people to go homeless. This ranges from a wide set of reasons, both internal and external. If you are interested in finding out these reasons, please go to the channel, “BSGE Tech videos” to view the video. You may also simply click on the link provided below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC0pdoT2Jd4&t=4s

Hungry? Not today!

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Those who are homeless are suffering everyday from financial issues, living conditions, depravation of homes, weather conditions, diseases, and most importantly hunger. The homeless population barely make enough for them and their family to survive upon. And with every single penny they make, they spend it on food and water. They barely have anytime to do anything else other than worrying about their next meal. But this can stop, we can help them. From organization and volunteers to churches, we can build a place where those without a home or food are welcomed to stay and eat as they please. We can donate food, clothes, and other necessities to the homeless. Lets drive the hunger away! Sign our petition today and become a member of homesfortomorrow.org.