Conference Allows Me to Learn About Poverty

By Stanley Williams

             First of all, I want to thank Brian Davis for inviting me on the trip to Seattle.  Also, I would like to thank everyone involved in making it possible for the street newspaper to come together for exchanging ideas.

            We all wanted to receive important information that we could use to improve the newspaper.  I am sure that for the people that have been working with the homeless and the Coalition learned a great deal and were able to carry a wealth of information home.  For me it was my first real chance to see and hear all the different things that people are doing all around the world for the homeless.  I was also my first time meeting with people of people from all over the world with at least 29 different street newspaper represented.

            There were four of us from Cleveland who went to Seattle.  We took TWA airline and the trip and the trip there was just great.  When we arrived in Seattle, we took a cab from the airport to our first destination, which was where the welcoming and orientation was being held.  They had a nice lunch and a few poems were read.  We got a chance to see some of the things and people that were in the area of the Real Change newspaper office.

             After the orientation, we went to the University of Washington where we would be staying.

             The whole purpose of going to Seattle was to attend workshops that would educate us in the areas that we thought were most important or most helpful in improving our approach when dealing with the newspaper and public.  I went to the “Growing a Budget” workshop instead of “Vendor Services” hoping to learn how to grow a budget.  I also went to the “Working with the Youth” workshop instead of “Starting from Scratch,” hoping to learn some tips on involving the youth because I do believe that the youth is the future.

            I went to the “First Amendment Issues” workshop instead of “Involving Homeless People”. To hear more about the problem that Cleveland was having with the vendors selling the Grapevine, and what kind of future would we have.  I went to “Covering Urban Issues” just to become more educated on what was happening on that subject, instead of going to “Making Homeless a Political Issue.”

             Finally, I went to the “Homeless Papers and the Internet”, instead of going to the “Homeless Papers and the internet”, instead of going to the writing Workshop”, to learn the importance of the Internet, and I am looking forward to my first lesson from Brian on the Internet.  I would like to say that the classes that I went to were so totally new to me and I really didn’t learn much from them, but I did hear a lot of interesting things about what was happening around the world.  I hope that things get better for everyone.  I would like to say good luck to all of the people who have dedicated their time and efforts in helping the hopeless population.

 Copyright for the Homeless Grapevine October1997-Nov. 1997 Issue 23