We spoke with Marisa and Avonna, on 12/5/13

Coalition for the Homeless is a organization that helps people from financial aid, to helping people get food and off the streets, to helping women who were homeless due to sexual violence find their voice. When we visited them we got a tour, we helped them get ready for their holiday party, and we unpacked toys that they gave out to children at their holiday party. The goal of this field work was to learn a bit about the Coalition for the Homeless and to assist them in any way we could. We also had gotten petitions, stickers, bracelets and pins from them previously so that we could try and get as many student signatures for them.This was so they could try to raise awareness to the new mayor about the issues of homelessness in New York City. We accomplished this and more from this visit and our group hopes to do more with this organization. On this visit I learned about poverty in New York City. I learned about how difficult it is for a family in poverty to get out of the hardships they face on a daily basis. I fond out that every night more than 60,000 people, including more than 22,000 children, experience homelessness. I also found out that though this organization gets a lot of clothing donations, one article of clothing they do not often get is socks. After hearing this, one of our group members contributed the idea that we could hold a sock drive at our school. We all thought this was a good idea, but unfortunately we could not do this. We then were introduced to the idea of contacting large organizations that sell socks, and asking them to give socks to us to donate to Coalition for the Homeless. This was the next step we took. We are now waiting to see if we get any donations from companies such as, Hanes, Walmart, Target, Macy’s, and etc. What motivated me about this fieldwork was what came out of it. We are doing this great thing for a wonderful organization and I feel very confident that reaching out to the big organizations will carry out as planed.