Invisible People- Donna is not invisible.

Mark Horvath, a DOOR Hollywood board member, interviews “real people with real stories” and shares the stories of those who are experiencing homelessness. He seeks to tell stories to make the less invisible. DOOR is thankful to Mark for his work, and happy to share it here, www.invisiblepeople.tv/blog.

Donna

Posted by invisiblepeople | Filed under real stories by real people

Donna is a single mother of five children. She has been homeless for about a year, choosing to live in a tent by the river instead of staying in a shelter. Although she has encountered unthinkable dangers while living outside- vandalism, assault- she still prefers this over staying in a shelter. This may seem counter-intuitive to those who have never been homeless. But remember that shelters have increasingly become overcrowded, so the lines for a bed, food, and showers have become longer and longer. Besides, Donna says she doesn’t feel safe anywhere.

I met Donna at the Prado Day Center. She caught my attention because she was there both as a client and as a volunteer. She was doing laundry for other homeless people using the day center. She mentions that she has gone weeks without clean clothes, so she appreciates what clean clothes will mean to other folks at the center. (Learn more about Laundry Love and become involved in your community.)

My heart breaks for Donna and all of the other women I see living alone on the streets. Nobody wants to imagine their mother or grandmother living in a vulnerable situation. But the sad reality of homelessness today is that many ladies living without a home look just like my grandmother.

Lighthouse Church, Prayer Room and Music Ministry in Miami

This week we are sharing the story of The Lighthouse, a ministry that we partner with in Miami. Our friend Laura is on the DOOR board in Miami and is active at the Lighthouse.

THE LIGHTHOUSE: ministry, community, something altogether

“Being in community forces us to understand and confront complex issues of compassion, justice, morality, behavior, faith, love and on and on.”
–Bruce Reyes-Chow and Mission Bay Community Church

I think the hardest part about talking about the Lighthouse, is talking about the Lighthouse. I think it is a special and rare thing to have a community that is like a family, ministry, church, home, physical place, spiritual retreat, rock band, school, mission camp, place of safety and shelter, and more! I typically see “church” as an institution. It displays a sense of organization. It has rules. It attempts to be living in that it gathers members, deters members, lives, breathes and sometimes dies. I love the living institutional “church.” Mostly, because I love organization, in every sense of the word. I attend regularly and have many responsibilities in a Sunday morning “church.”

The Lighthouse is hardly an institution, but it is a church, or maybe a ministry, or maybe any of those words above. A better description for the Lighthouse is that it is a community and within that community its being attempts to shines God’s love in the city of Miami. It does this through relationships, learning about Jesus Christ, worship, music school, volunteer service, developing church leadership, home cooked meals, the worship arts and greatest of all, prayer.

I have been a part of the Lighthouse community for six years. In that six years it has been all of those words and more for me. I have watched people and programs come and go. I have celebrated with and for the Lighthouse. I have cried and anguished over personal matters, decisions and loss within it. It is not always an easy or comfortable place to be. It is not always welcoming. It is always safe and it is always where God is. It helps me to understand and confront issues that I never would have otherwise. I think like the quote above discusses, the Lighthouse is a part of my commitment as a Christian because every time I enter its doors or think upon its complexity I am entering and confronting the world in which I live and the ways in which God wants me to shine His love to others.

By Laura Fothergill
DOOR-Miami Board member

MIchelle Obama's Essay on the Spirit of Giving

via The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com by The Huffington Post News Editors on 4/15/09

In an exclusive essay for USA Today, Michelle Obama extols the importance of giving -- especially in these trying times. She writes, "When so many people are struggling to make ends meet, we need everyone pulling together to solve our nation's problems and to lift up our fellow Americans." She also highlights the importance of fostering service and social consciousness in our youth, noting that "the current generation of young people is one of the most socially conscious and active, with 61% of 13- to 25-year-olds saying they feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world."

Her essay focuses on the new Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which "promotes the cause of service among young people by investing in service-learning" and which will "dramatically increase the number of full- and part-time service opportunities for college-age students."

But the best part is, she's not just talking. As we've pointed out plenty of times, Michelle Obama walks the walk -- and encourages others to do the same!

And most importantly, Michelle takes time to put a spotlight on those smaller acts of community service -- the ones that don't involve a food bank, donations, or a special occasion.

Every day we hear stories of people rising to the occasion and making a real difference: the retiree who volunteers at the local elementary school to help children learn to read; the woman down the block who watches out for her neighbor's kids after school -- providing a snack, some wisdom and a home with a light on until parents return from a long day of work; the mothers and fathers in a neighborhood who coach Little League and soccer and teach kids about good sportsmanship and perseverance and teamwork.

Read the rest of the USA Today article...

We want to put a spotlight on these stories as well, which is why we've asked you to help us! Like we said, difficult times bring communities together as people lean on one another for support. In this recession, there's no shortage of communities around the country that have rallied around a struggling neighbor, reached out a helping hand to those around them, or donated free dry cleaning to the job-seeking and unemployed. We know there are more stories like these and HuffPost wants to highlight them. If you read or hear about an act of kindness in your community, email us the story at goodnews@huffingtonpost.com.

And just in case you're looking for inspiration, we've always found this slideshow particularly uplifting:

*Follow HuffPostLiving on Twitter and become a fan of Huffington Post Living on Facebook*

Earbud Urbanism

http://thewhereblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/earbud-urbanism.html

via Where by Marc Couillais on 3/24/09


I was walking down the in downtown Chicago recently wearing my white earbuds, loud tunes pumping out of my iPod into my head, and it got me thinking. When you have earbuds in, it's almost as if the music is inside your head. It overtakes your thoughts. Ok, maybe not completely, but it would be hard to deny the fact that what we listen to affects our mood and our perception of our surroundings.

On this walk, I started to become aware of how many people were walking around with one of their five senses -- hearing -- completely disconnected from their environment, and I thought to myself: how does this disconnection alter our perception of the urban condition as we experience it? I wonder how many urban designers take into consideration the fact that people are walking around detached from their environment, being highly influenced by a source that the designers themselves cannot control. Personal technology is taking over how we interpret our surroundings and changing the way we feel about places, and this should be considered as we move further and further into interactive technologies.

So, imagine: your music is playing in your ears, and you're walking down the street with a certain demeanor dictated by the recent events in your life, the weather, and of course your music; what's the last thing you notice? Advertisements. Ironically, the ads placed all around the city to get you to buy devices with white earbuds are suddenly ineffective, blending into the grey zone of focus deprivation caused by the mood enhancing device sending electrical waves to your brain. In the end, it is the corporation, the large companies that build and control our urban experiences. Storefronts are often completely detached from the context of the buildings they are plugged into, creating a street level experience dictated more by the corporate retailers than the architect or planner. So it is fair to say that these businesses have a significant stake in our urban experience, and will not keep pumping money into failing advertising mediums but will instead resort to new mediums, capitalizing on our newfound technological dependency.

I can imagine, in the near future, holding your electronic device up to a window display and downloading music from a record store. The technology is already here; its just a matter of how that tech is eventually used as a marketing tool that will change the way we experience the city and our daily life. Instead of billboards, there will be giant digital displays. Using the technology showcased in the Mini ad a while back, called "augmented reality," these displays will reflect you as you walk by, but will project a certain brand of clothing onto your image, detecting your body size and instantly altering the clothing image to fit you using a complex algorithm. These displays will show you in real-time with a Snickers and a Coke in your hand asking "Why Wait?"

So I wonder: how much of what we experience is predetermined by a planner, an architect, or a corporation, and how much of it is dependent on sources we create and introduce ourselves? My guess is that we will increasingly be adding our own sources and corporations will tap into this and use it to promote their agendas, thereby creating a new urban condition. Earbud Urbanism, anyone?


(Photos from Apple and Designboom . The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)




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