World-420 Students Campaign to Fight Homelessness

World 420: “Women Changing the World”, is a mandatory course for all Russell Sage students. In the past, the course has focused on breaking the class into small groups for human rights issue presentations, and then a final human rights project which positively changes and impacts local organizations, projects, or establishments. However, this year, Professor Christine Nealon’s World 420 class has taken a different approach to “changing the world,” or at least the local community. Rather than break the class into small groups with different projects, the entire class is banding together to help fight homelessness and bring awareness to their cause. By working as a large group, the class hopes to have a greater impact with their efforts.

With Joseph’s House, a local not- for-profit shelter and service center, just a block away from Russell Sage, an opportunity for the students to spend time at the shelter, learning about homelessness from those who experience it, and understanding their daily struggles, was easily accessible. After spending the first half of their semester speaking with the guests of Joseph’s House as well as staff, the students began to develop a deeper understanding of homelessness and the stereotypes associated with it. “What many people don’t realize is that homelessness can happen to anyone, it doesn’t discriminate. Society may have a stereotype for the homeless, but all it takes are a few unfortunate incidents for a person to become homeless. Our class wanted the Troy community to become more aware of this and help us create change,” said Jena Santa Maria, a Russell Sage Senior.

In order to create change, the WLD 420 students organized a campaign they titled “Got Shelter?” The phrase was printed on t-shirts, which each student was responsible for selling in order to generate profits which would ultimately benefit the Joseph’s House and Shelter of Troy. The class came to a consensus that t-shirts would bring more exposure to their campaign throughout the Russell Sage and Troy communities and would bring important funds to the shelter for many of their basic needs.

T-shirts were sold for $12 each through November 20^th. In total, the class raised nearly $1000 for Josephs House and Shelter of Troy. The class hopes that not only will the money they raise help fight homelessness within the shelter itself, but also that their campaign will prevent people from ignoring a human rights issue which is prevalent in their local community.

The class will also reveal their website, www.sage.edu/gotshelter, during their December 14^th World Conference presentation. The website will feature statistics about homelessness, information about community events regarding poverty and homelessness, and progress the campaign has made. Like the t-shirts, the goal of the website is to continue raising awareness in the community about homelessness.

For more information regarding the World 420 class or the Got Shelter?  campaign, Professor Nealon can be reached at nealoc@sage.edu,  the student organizers of Got Shelter? Can be reached at GotShelter@sage.edu, and Josephs House and Shelter can be reached at tneitzel@josephshousetroy.org.