The first Annual Homelessness Awareness Day at UC Davis

I am writing to inform readers about the outcome
of the Homeless Awareness Day at UC Davis sponsored by The Associated
Students at UC Davis (ASUCD). The event took place on the 27th of Feb.
at the Memorial Union at the University of California, Davis campus. A
little background behind the event is needed.

The Homeless Awareness Day at UC Davis was inspired by the death of
Jesse Newberry, a 24 year old youth who died by being hit by an Amtrak
train around Freeborn Hall near the UC Davis campus. Activists took
the idea of a homeless awareness day to the Associated Students at UC
Davis and the Associated Students went to work on a senate
resolution. The senate resolution designated a Homeless Awareness Week
at the UC Davis campus and it called on other bodies of local
government to pass resolutions that observed the homeless awareness
week at UC Davis. With the passing of the resolution, we were able to
finalize the logistics for a Homeless Awareness Day event at UC Davis.

The kick off of the event was a clothing drive where we were able to
collect numerous clothing donations from students at the campus as
well as from concerned community members. Besides the clothing drive
that we had for the homeless, we planned a resource fair and invited
the attendance of social service agencies from the community that
provide service to the poor and the homeless of our community. Having
the organizations at the fair served two functions. The first function
for the resource fair was so that the homeless and other
disenfranchised groups attending the rally would become more aware of
resources that are available to them in the community. The second
function of the resource fair was to give students interested in
social issues an avenue to volunteer for a social service agency. We
also invited several speakers to the event.

We invited Steve Jerome Wyatt, an ex-homeless individual and current
community college student and homeless activist to read from a pre
written script authored by Jesse Newberry's mother. Jesse's mother was
very happy to have the community recognize the life of her son. We
invited Lawson Snipes, a homeless man and Editor-in-Chief of the
homeless publication and journal - The Spare Changer. Lawson spoke
about his experience of being homeless at UC Davis in the early 1970's
as a UC Davis student.

We had two UC Davis students present poetry on homelessness and poverty.

Another speaker at the event was Davis City Council member Lamar Heystek.

At the event were representatives from California Assembly Woman Lois
Wolk's office and from the Yolo County Board of Supervisor Helen
Thompson's office.

The student senate resolution that designated the Homelessness
Awareness Day at UC Davis was presented as well as a mayoral
proclamation which was authored by Sue Greenwald that established a
sister homeless awareness week in the city of Davis Feb 27th through
the 2nd of March. Also presented was a similar resolution that
Assembly woman Lois Wolk introduced in the California Assembly.

I think a very big thanks has to go to The Associated Students at UC
Davis as well as the students of the UC Davis California Public
Interest Research Group. Without their assistance, this event would
not have been possible at all. Putting this event together was truly
team work.

The event was a success for many reasons. The first reason is that the
event allowed students on campus to learn about social service
agencies that serve the impoverished. The organizations present were
able to at least get some students interested in what it is that they
do. The event had good press coverage. Many community members in Davis
and in other parts of Yolo County seen that it was truly possible for
different groups of people including community members and homeless
people to get together and learn about homelessness.

Now that homelessness has been officially recognized in the community,
homeless activists will now set out on the path to push for more
educational events specifically around the topic of homelessness and
hunger in the city of Davis. We would like to try to look at the
feasibility of partnering up the homeless with specific employers in
the downtown Davis area.

Untreated medical illness is prevalent in the Davis homeless
population. A idea we like to try to push for is the feasibility of
getting family practice doctors in the community to agree to see
homeless people once a week. Homeless people have access to Y-CHIP
which is a very basic form of medical insurance that is for the
homeless of the community. Hopefully more medical access for the
homeless will increase the number of medical problems that are treated
in the homeless population.

We would like to start the discussion of getting marriage and family
therapists in the community to volunteer some of their time to provide
counseling for the homeless in the community. Counseling is a very big
need for the homeless in Davis. It it is reality that once a person is
homeless, it is very difficult to get out of homelessness.

If a person is going to be homeless for a long period of time, there
should not be a reason why they cannot have a medical or mental health
issue treated at a early stage.

Government works very hard to address the needs of the homeless and
the impoverished. There is much that the private sector and the
community can do to improve the quality of life for our homeless. I
and other activists hope to at least stimulate discussion around how
we can improve the quality of life of our homeless for the long term
via contributions from the community.

For information about the Homelessness Awareness Day at UC Davis,
please visit the California Aggie website at
http://media.http://www.californiaaggie.com/media/storage/paper981/news/2007/03/01/CampusNews/Feb-26.To.Mar.2.Recognized.As.Hunger.And.Homelessness.Awareness.Week-2751469.shtml.

Thank You very much for your support,

Richard Cipian