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:: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 ::
Use Yahoo Group to Create Support Group for A Homeless
Posted by Mr. Cheng with (356) Comments
I have proposed one homeless solution to have many people to form a support group to help one homeless person or family to move off homelessness since it normally may take lots of resources to move a homeless off homelessness. For example, it averagely takes 11 months for New York City Homeless Department to help a homeless family to move off homelessness and cost about $30,000. From my own experience, it costs me from dozen hundreds to ten thousands to do so. Therefore, a group of people supporting a homeless person or family would be much easier and realistic. But how to coordinate the support group cost effectively is a big challenge.
For past year, I have been piloting on using Yahoo Group to setup a support group for each homeless came to me for help, and I have found it very powerful, and quite a few already moved off homelessness. I believe it works well, and here are some of my hands on experience that others may find very useful:
1. I can create Yahoo Group for the homeless person or homeless families who came to me right away, but it is important to make it a private group because from then on, all the conversations and posted messages are supposed to be private, NOT to be searchable at Internet, and any future members should be invited or moderated and disconnected should there be any undesired conversations that may contradict the purpose of supporting the homeless to move off homelessness.
2. It is very important to keep in mind, that for each support group, should support only ONE homeless or homeless family. The Homeless Guy used to have a link to a Yahoo Group but did not succeed and later abandoned because so many homeless were put into that ONE group. Each Yahoo support group supposed to have only ONE homeless and the rest support members have lots of resources. The reason is simply because homeless represent low energy in Feng Shuei, and too many homeless people in a group will sure to fight, fight for the limited resources. e.g. If one supporter kicks in $100 cash assistance as s/he see fit for one homeless s/he wants to help, others will feel discriminated ...etc. This is similar to the old failed HUD program putting all the low income families in one building, and one homeless per Yahoo Group is like new Section 8 program that very few low income families in the same rental apartment.
3. The moderator of the support group should be the person asking all kinds of questions and show all the concerns, and the homeless person or family being supported will post messages talking about their needs and difficulty that will automatically sent to this group members. And, any member will posted donation intent or resource sharing as s/he see fit at the convenient time. All the help will be sent directly from the group member to the supported homeless. e.g. email cash assistance thru PayPal, wiring money to homeless on street without bank account thru Western Union, shipping used computer or clothes ...etc.
4. At the time, when not enough resources or members in the support group to respond easily to the demand of the homeless being supported, the moderator or other members should invite other wealthy or resourcesful friends or family member to join the group. e.g. After email emergency cash to help a homeless down Atlanta thru PayPal and provide lots of useful local for rent websites remotely, the homeless after got the SDDI and food stamp needed a used car, so we invited a friend's brother-in-law relocated down there who later donated his used car to the homeless after buying a new car.
5. It is important that the homeless being supported ONLY posts message or request openly in the group, rather than target any particular member. One good thing about the Yahoo Group is that it distants the homeless and the support members; e.g. I have a group supporting a homeless in Atlanta containing several dozens friends or families members from UK, NY, NJ, GA, CA, Taiwan, China ...etc. That way, the group only working on helping the homeless move off homelessness, nothing to feel uncomfortable normally face to face may bring. Many homeless on street can communicate very decently thru posting messages and share lots of their experience that may benefit the support group as well.
This solution works very well because it emulates the Project Management process at JP Morgan Chase. A project manager first request resources, system admin, dba, programmer ...etc and form a project group, just like the moderator of the support group first creates a Yahoo Group and invite all sorts of related people, friends, social worker, doctor, lawyer, ...etc to join the group. From then on, a regular project meeting driving lots of tasks that different resources will complete and status will be reported on next project meeting. Whenever resource insufficient, allocate more. The homeless being supported is like the "Customer" of a project and will participate the project meeting and making the request and the moderator is like the "Project manager" continue evaluating the request and turn them to requirement and make result happened.
6. Yahoo Group is a great tool for this purpose and is free; it is more than an email list, once created, both the supported homeless and members can easily reach all the group, yet not revealing the real email address if chose not too. Each member can also choose to receive individual email, or daily summary, or no email at all can come to group browse all the posted messages and respond when have time. It can also store files, useful resource links, websites, database ...etc. If one knows how to use it effectively, it can provide the function of state of the art Project Management functions as well.
:: Mr Cheng 12:40 AM [+] ::
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