By: Jayden Park Growing up in Washington, I would frequently encounter people experiencing homelessness, whether it was through walking past encampments when visiting Seattle or seeing people sleeping in bus shelters during Bellevue winters. Serving on the Bellevue Youth Council at the time also broadened how I understood the issue, especially when I would be discussing homelessness with students from other schools and communities. I also saw how many people my age were affected by it, which made it clear this wasn’t some distant issue. I felt that just noticing the problem was not enough, especially once I realized how little consistent, on-the-ground support unhoused individuals in our area actually receive while I was researching and writing for the LearnMore Blog. Both of these experiences, seeing unhoused individuals in my community and exploring the issue through my work on LearnMore, pushed me to want to take real action instead of just writing about it. The idea to bring this work to my own community initially came out of a meeting with Zac; when he was talking about expanding Makeshift Travelers to other states, I suggested we look at doing something here in my area. From there, we reached out to a number of organizations and even contacted Bellevue city government to see who might want to partner with us. For a while, we didn’t hear back from anyone, but eventually, we finally connected with the NEST Mission. Fundraising for Supplies Zac generously provided 8 Makeshift Travelers backpacks for the project, but they were empty units, as fully stocked ones were being sent to Los Angeles at the time. That wasn’t a problem though, as I was already running the Korean Origins and Recorded Experiences project, an organization to connect Korean Americans in Washington, with a few classmates at my high school. Through that project, we connected with the Seattle Office of Korean education, which granted us funding to support our work. I saw an opportunity to put that funding towards the additional items to put in the backpacks, so I fundraised further and used it to purchase supplies: water bottles, emergency shelter tents, notebooks and pens, toiletries, raincoats, emergency sleeping bags, and other essential items. In total, we put together full packs for 8 Makeshift Travelers. Delivering the Packs Last week, I drove out to the NEST Mission in Lynnwood to deliver the packs in person. Handing them over was one of the most meaningful and eye-opening experiences I’ve had. The people were happy to get the backpacks themselves, but what really surprised me was how much more excited they got once they realized the bags were actually filled with things they needed. Talking with a few of the unhoused people there, I learned that the backpack mattered to them just as much—if not more—than the contents of it because a lot of them didn’t have anything to carry their belongings in and relied on alternatives like shopping carts instead. This also put into perspective that objects I took for granted every day can mean something worth being grateful for to others. Reflection Homelessness in Washington is a pressing issue that needs more attention and action taken towards it, especially on an individual and community level. Working on this project showed me that small, specific actions, built from research, can be incredibly meaningful and make a true difference. Of course, there is an argument to be made that instead of distributing supplies like this, resources would be better spent targeting root causes like substance abuse or the lack of affordable housing. While this is true, there is also real value to meeting people where they are right now and providing basic supplies can lessen the burden for unhoused individuals. I do plan to investigate this further to see what I can do beyond distribution in my community, though. Going forward, I want to keep pairing the research side of my work at the HomeMore Project with direct action like this, and I want to expand it beyond Lynnwood to other communities across Washington. I also want to start collecting testimonies from the people I talk to and use these stories to help inform how we can support unhoused communities locally, rather than just distributing packs. During this delivery, I got the chance to talk with a few people, but not nearly as much as I wanted to or in enough depth. Ultimately, this was an incredibly valuable experience, one I will definitely continue to do and improve on while applying the lessons learned from this first delivery. References KORE Project. https://www.thekoreproject.org/ Nest Mission. “End Homelessness.” https://www.nestmission.org/ Seattle Office of Korean Education (Korean Education Center in Seattle). https://kecseattle.org/english/
