Highlighting The Homeless Problem Using Social Media

Stephen M. FellsUnder the ‘bizarre’ category Matthew Ferrara made an interesting observation in his recent blog post ‘Bizarre, Cool, Finally and Funny: Observations from the 2009 NAR Annual Conference’:

“Bizarre: Do you think that if the REALTOR convention happens in a city with a high homeless rates, we’d talk about it at a session or two? It seems the height of irony that so many “home ownership professionals” gather in places like San Francisco, San Diego, New Orleans and Washington DC – ostensibly to learn new ways to sell more homes – only to find themselves taking the bus from hotel to convention center because the streets are overcrowded with people without homes. Am I the only one who noticed this, all these years?”

That observation came to mind when I saw the following video on CNN. Created by Mark Horvath, an ex-Hollywood executive who has himself been homeless, the video together with other social tools draws attention to the problem of homelessness in the United States. Leveraging twitter, Facebook, Flickr and a blog amongst his journalistic tools Horvath tells some shocking stories. Poignantly his blog warns “CAUTION: some content may be offensive. Our hope is you’ll get mad enough to do something.”

2 thoughts on “Highlighting The Homeless Problem Using Social Media

  1. Pingback: uberVU - social comments

  2. Awesome call! I know when Frances posts a link it is a gold mine. I love what you write about. Your blog reminded me of something I wrote and repeat all the time:

    “If we are not using our time, our power, our success in life, our talents that has us seated in a nice car, if we are not doing anything proactive, well then we are just doing NOTHING. So for God sake, if we see a beggar in cold or hunger, a child with a dirty face shivering trying to do something to earn a coin, we should step away from that justified indifference, and give them something to eat, something to wear, give them something, DO something more than just ignoring they are there. They exist and we all should help!”

    http://piccoladurand.posterous.com/are-we-turning-our-backs

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *