Making a community offering and what I learned from it
Note: This is part of my personal research on the homeless community and the stakeholders within.
The homeless community and its stakeholders are more widespread than one could ever imagine. From non profit organizations to government agencies down to shelters and temporary housing the amount of individuals in this space is continually growing. Entering any space or community is daunting. One of the most important things I’ve learned is to have a clear goal or problem statement. Once you begin your research and start talking to people its easy to get distracted and fall into the trope of solving for a stakeholders problem. With an initial goal of mapping homelessness I actually started out trying to better understand the homeless plight. I didn’t want to walk into a solution bringing a lot of assumptions to the table. My research can be broken down into three separate learning pillars that I think can serve as guidelines for future research in any industry.
Relationships
By nature of the work the people in this community are altruistic by nature. They are extremely willing to help and provide any access to material that they can. Take advantage of this but be mindful of what they expect in return. It’s important to establish a give and take relationship. Make sure you bring something to the table in exchange for the information or counsel you’re receiving. At the very least find a way they can be a passive participant in the process so they have the opportunity to see outcomes and benefits.
Information
There is a ton of desk research out there on statistics and best practices but my time in the field proved to be more promising. To my surprise once I started interviewing stakeholders in the space they had a lot more insight and information than anything I could find online. The more people you speak to in the field or “on the ground” the better perspective you get. For me, they knew the intricacies of everyday life for the homeless and their daily struggles. They’re certain stories and experiences that you can only hear in person, they don’t exist online or in some web repository.
Constraints
Understanding the time you have is more essential than I can considered. Throughout the course of problem solving its easy to go down different routes and paths towards different solutions. Staying the course on your initial plan is essential. Through doing your research people may present other problems that you haven’t considered or different methods that you might be interested in pursuing. When trying to map the homeless I was introduced to a number of different problems that could be solved by lite weight digital solutions. Given the time constraitns I was under these solutions were attractive but were not feasible.
If you’re not deeply invested, interested or the least curious it will show to the people who are. It’s like going to a party uninvited, people will question why you’re there.
Curiosity
Whenever pursuing a cause make sure you’re in it for the right reasons. People can tell if you have an agenda or not and they feed off of that. If you’re genuinely curious they will be more than eager to help and sense your enthusiasm and vice versa. Be genuinely open and curious. Curiousity opens and avenue to conversations that might not be directly aligned with your research but could end up allowing you to be a connector or someone of influence within the community. At the very least it opens the door for introductions to more conversations.
Going Forward
Focusing on necessity is my next goal. Its easy to make something that you like and enjoy but its much harder to make something that is needed by a wide audience, is accessible and is warranted. I want to make sure that whatever offering, service or material I publicly present going forward has a well defined audience and can find immediate value in my offering. Offerings are a great way to enter a community, get an introduction or just general exposure. Everyone loves something for free especially when it helps.
