Most students interact with Eugene’s homeless minimally. Saying no to people requesting spare change is generally their only contact with the often misunderstood citizens. However, University student-volunteers Jolene Dobbins and Jessica Daniels said their time with Project Homeless Connect made them understand being homeless is a product of circumstance, not idleness.
Project Homeless Connect is an event organized by the United Way that offers the county’s homeless a unique opportunity to connect with essential services such as housing, employment, legal services, government assistance programs, access to medical care and dental check-ups.
“Students often have negative feelings about the homeless,” Daniels said. “People think they are lazy and haven’t tried to get work, or that they were addicts, when in reality, a lot of homeless citizens are injured and can’t work or they lost their job. They are not bad people, just people put in a bad place.”
The project provided services to 1,158 Lane County residents last year with the help of 602 community-member volunteers. This year, Megan O’Connor, the United Way volunteer supervisor, said there are still 166 volunteers spots that need to be filled before the March 6 event.
“Last year we had over 300 different service donors, ranging from everything from hot meals to bike repair to spaying and neutering services for citizens’ pets,” O’Connor said. “The Lane County Fairgrounds transforms with pipe and drape into a city complete with all of its available service, only for free.”
Dobbins and Daniels have worked with the United Way to organize Project Homeless Connect since the beginning of this year’s project, an opportunity O’Connor said makes the experience even more valuable for students.
“I absolutely believe that having student volunteers attend meetings and watch as a huge group of collaborative institutions and businesses come together accurately illustrates to students what it takes to plan an event of this magnitude,” she said.
Daniels, a second-year volunteer for the event, said that although the process prepared her for the logistics of event-planning, nothing was more satisfying than meeting the homeless citizens who benefited from her hard work.
“I was a part of the planning, leading up to the actual event, so it was wonderful to connect what we worked so hard for with the faces of people that were impacted by it,” she said. “Actually sitting down and eating with people and hearing their stories made the hard work more than worthwhile.”
Dobbins became involved with the event after someone she worked with at the HIV Alliance told her about the project.
“I liked working with the homeless, and this was an opportunity to help even more,” she said. “The more I got involved with people, the more I became aware of what they need. It opened my eyes.”
Richie Weinman, director of Project Homeless Connect, encourages students to get involved.
“We are all part of a larger community, whether we realize it or not,” he said. “I would bet that there are students at the University who have families who are facing the possibility of being homeless.”
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