Uncommon Fireside Chats: Spring 2015 Report

Read the ​full report at  goo.gl/uWIBZS

Our project invites speakers with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to College houses for hour-long intimate fireside chat with students, usually on a weekend. So far we’ve reached sixteen houses. This meets the breadth of students where they are, encouraging them to engage speakers’ life stories and experiences with homelessness in an environment that’s familiar and open for all. One second year and community-service czar in Talbot House said:

“[G]etting the chance to talk with people who have experienced homelessness helped me to see that, while homelessness is an issue that affects society, the response to homelessness must take into account the ways that it affects individuals. Most of all, it is important to remember that, while issues like homelessness can change people, no one issue can define a person. Rather, we people, all of us, define homelessness (and other issues) by the way we respond to it.”