Author Archives: Street Stories

ESSAY #2 September – November: Processing Growth

My experience starting a blog this fall has been both harder than I expected and more interesting than I expected. Street Stories allowed me to meet and speak with staff at NightShift who inspired me with their stories and vision behind the organization. It also allowed me to share coffee with street friends and have a window into what their daily lives are like. Alternatively, Street Stories created space for me to get frustrated with my inability to figure out WordPress, and exposed my visually uncreative side. Yet, throughout all of the ups and downs, I am proud of Street Stories and I hope to continue it.

Street Stories houses stories from Whalley, the city centre of Surrey, and NightShift, an organization that serves vulnerable people residing in this area. Throughout the blog, I mainly talk about my experience of becoming a volunteer with NightShift, my experience interviewing a few of their staff members, and an experience I had one time walking around Whalley and talking to some people on the street. My imagined audience for this blog is young adults from 18-30 who are looking for a way to give back to the community. I also hope Street Stories would be shared with people who typically hold a negative view of the homeless population in Surrey. I realize the importance of understanding the values of my intended audience and their attitude towards the vulnerable population in Surrey (Hassan, 2011). Considering I am a young adult, and I am constantly around young adults, I know that we are a group of people who are in love with being “too busy.” In light of this, there are many people who feel passionately about helping others in their city, but feel “too busy” to make steps towards putting that passion in action. Street Stories aims to confront young adults in this reality, letting people know that there is a possibility for a change in priorities to impact the greater good of their city.

Through content, I address these audiences by sharing the stories of what NightShift is doing on my blog. Through design, I address this audience by creating Street Stories to be minimalistic and easy to navigate. I also try my best to use photos that connect with the stories that I’m telling, because I feel that young adults connect with visual pieces. Lastly, I have displayed my Instagram to show more of who I am, in hopes of connecting with young adults who come across my blog.

The value provided by Street Stories is not tangible. I relate to Debbie Chachra when she states “I am not a maker,” (2015). She emphasizes how history has set up people who physically make things to be seen as superior to those who are caregivers, or those who teach (Chachra, 2015). Like Chachra, I push against this notion. Although Street Stories does not add any physical value to those who engage with it, it offers people the wonder of a human story. Also, it offers a platform for vulnerable people’s stories to be told. Awareness of the daily lives of those living on the streets and the amazing work that NightShift does is what people will receive when visiting Street Stories.

Using Google Analytics has not informed me of my audience and their behaviour because I do not have enough traffic coming through my site. However, I am thankful to have learned the basics of how to analyze the behaviour of my audience and create goals for my site. I hope to use this knowledge in the continuation of my blog.

Looking back to the first weeks of sunny September, the design of my blog has changed drastically but my core content has stayed the same. I changed my theme about half way through the semester because it was not allowing me to express my content effectively. My new theme shows more pictures, which allows me to communicate my content in an impactful way. As W. Gardner Campbell said, when one is intentional with building their personal cyberinfrastructure, they has the potential to create space for one to express their passions and aspirations (2009). Although my personal cyberinfrastructure still has a long way to go, I believe that it has come very far in the past four months.

All in all, I am grateful for all of the blogging experience I have gained this fall. Starting with a passion for the vulnerable people living within Surrey, navigating my way through design and themes, and learning to find my voice through it all has been a journey that I hope to continue. As I have just finished the volunteer training for NightShift, Street Stories will continue with stories from the people I meet through my weekly volunteer experience. Through this, I plan to connect my imagined audience with impactful stories that too often go untold.

Campbell, W. G. (September 4, 2009). A personal cyberinfrastructure. Educause Review. Retrieved from

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2009/9/a-personal-cyberinfrastructure

Chachra, D. (January 23, 2015). Why I am not a maker. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-maker/384767/

Hassan, M. (March 1, 2011). Developing an audience profile. Communications Today. Retrieved from http://communicationandtechnology2011.blogspot.com/2011/03/developing-audience-profile.html

FORGE : DAY 2

FORGE Day 2 was practical and impactful. The first half of the Saturday morning was spent learning about Naloxone. Naloxone kits are used for people who overdose, and have saved many. Marty, who was teaching us about Naloxone, said that in July there were 135 deaths in BC associated with overdose. Overdosing is an ongoing public health concern, and since many of the people that NightShift serves are using, it was definitely useful to learn about.

Naloxone is an antidote for an opioid overdose, and does not work for a non-opioid overdose. Opioids are drugs that are used to manage pain, and they often slow the body down or cause sleepiness. The Naloxone kit contains gloves, alcohol prep wipes, 3 needles, and Naloxone. Our group practiced by injecting water into oranges, which was kind of fun, but scary at the same time imagining administering it to someone in real life. My hands were extremely shaky, and I was wondering if I would be capable of actually doing this if it came down to it. Then, a member of the group said something that changed my perspective. “Our moment of fear is so minimal compared to their moments of fear.” After that, I felt thankful that I had access to the tools to help someone in such a terrible situation.

The second half of our Saturday morning together was spent hearing from Trisha Baptie. Trisha shared her heart wrenching story of how growing up with an abusive father changed the trajectory of her life. Dropping out of school in grade 6, the only way she knew how to make money was through prostitution. So, this is what Trisha did over the course of many years. She had 5 children along the way. To support them, she would work during the night and be a mother to them during the day. After meeting a kind woman who worked with Trinity Western University one night while she was on the street, she built a relationship that ended up changing her life. This woman encouraged her to leave prostitution and orchestrate a better life and future for herself and her children. She gave Trisha an immense amount of support along the way. Now, Trisha works to empower women to live violence and exploitation free through her organization called EVE. She aims at decriminalizing people selling sex in hopes of protecting these women. When sharing about her job, she said that these women “honour me with giving me their story to keep. I share their truth to inform policy.”

Trisha’s work in informing policy around prostitution and sex trafficking left me awestruck. Considering she is a woman with grade 6 education and a past filled with abuse, she overcame all obstacles to get where she is today. I left FORGE day 2 feeling empowered and inspired, and I’m excited to see what the next two days will bring!

PROCESS POST: Community guidelines (week 12)

Street Stories’ Community Guidelines

Street Stories is a place where the stories of vulnerable people living in Surrey and people involved with NightShift can be shared. In consideration of this, I will not tolerate any comments that are not respectful towards NightShift and those that they serve. Disrespectful comments that contain racism, sexism, or any explicit hatefulness will be deleted. In addition, these rules will be put in place to uphold the standard of respect desired on Street Stories. People who comment the following will be banned from commenting:

  • Name-calling, insulting, or attacking someone mentioned in a blog post, NightShift, or another site user
  • Posting inappropriate or abusive comments
  • Posting comments that question or devalue the voices of vulnerable people

These guidelines were inspired by Book Riot’s guidelines.

PROCESS POST: Class response (week 11)

This process post will be a response to the guest speaker we had in class named Darren Barefoot, who works with Capulet Communications. This was my favourite guest speaker we had this semester. Darren’s work reflects a lot of what I want to do in the future, which is marketing and communications for non-profit organizations. What compelled me most about Darren’s talk was when he spoke about Heartbeats and Remarkables. Heartbeats can be defined by the core operations of marketing within an organization. For example, every year NightShift does a fundraising gala and that is a Heartbeat of who they are and how they draw attention to their organizations. Another thing Darren talked about was Remarkables. Remarkables are campaigns that are out of the ordinary. They can look like PR stunts, gimmicks, pop-up events, or unique fundraising mechanisms.

For a good portion of the class we talked about Remarkables and different ones that Capulet has been involved with over the years. My favourite type of Remarkable campaigns Darren spoke about were volunteer activations. These types of campaigns generally call for high threshold volunteerism. An example he gave was when a cancer agency worked with a hair salon to create a new haircut that inspired people to cut their hair for cancer. Although it is a big ask for people to cut their hair, it is a remarkable marketing tactic that people will remember.

I am so grateful that Darren spoke with our class! I learned a lot from him and I will definitely be looking at Capulet’s website to learn from the way they do things and check out their featured Remarkables.

KIANA CAPTURES WHALLEY

The other day, I went for coffee with one of the high school students from my youth group. Her name is Kiana, and she is the sweetest soul. As we were talking, she told me about her love for photography. If you know me, you know I am not the best with a camera. So when Kiana told me this, it caught my attention. She told me about how she went with her photography class to downtown Vancouver and took a few pictures of people. When she showed me these two pictures, I knew I needed to ask her if she could take some pictures for this blog.

These were exactly the type of pictures that I want to have. Ones that represent people as they are. I told Kiana about my blog and the type of pictures I dreamed of having, and asked her if she would want to partner with me. She thankfully said yes, and we made a plan to go to Whalley the next week.

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I picked up Kiana from school. We stopped at Mcdonalds to pick up some coffee for our friends in Whalley. When we arrived in Whalley, it was golden hour and the city looked beautiful. I parked my car, looked at Kiana and said “Are you ready?” “Yes!” she responded with a smile.

We walked across the street to find some people hanging outside of NightShift. There were about five or six people there. I offered them coffee and casually talked to them about their day. A young couple was doing drugs and began to put them away while I was talking to them. After giving them coffee and talking to them, I told them about what Kiana and I were doing. A few people let Kiana take pictures of them, but most politely declined. They seemed a bit suspicious of us and what we were doing, which is understandable. Despite that, I feel that we were able to connect with them. Here is a picture of an amazing guy who is doing his best to make a difference for addicts in Canada by working closely with organizations and sharing his personal story.

After we spoke with everyone there, we headed over to Surrey Central to see if we could speak with anyone there. We quickly met a man who claimed the area to be his spot, and said that everyone knew him. He wasn’t lying. In the 20-30 minutes we were there, many people stopped by to talk to him. We handed out the rest of our coffee and spoke with these people. They were kind and warm. A couple people let Kiana take their picture. One guy posed for her against a tree, it was awesome. These people were open to talking to Kiana and I. They were not scary, they were not mean. They had found a community with each other in Surrey Central. I am thankful they let us have a window into that community, even if it was only for half an hour. Here is a picture of the man who posed.

 

I am so grateful to have partnered with Kiana for my blog! She is an incredible photographer at such a young age. She captures people authentically. More pictures to come throughout my blog! In the meantime, follow her instagram here.

INTERVIEW 3/3 : MEET MARYANNE

My last interview was with MaryAnne, the founder of NightShift. MaryAnne represents the heart, mind, and soul of the organization. During a frightening winter storm in 2004, MaryAnne was overwhelmed with the thought of people without homes having nowhere to sleep. She drove out to Surrey in the middle of the night, where she served sandwiches and kept watch over everyone in a small church for the night. This was the birth of NightShift.

Previously a high end real estate marketer, MaryAnne made a drastic life change in starting NightShift. When I asked her why, she replied saying

“There was a shift in my heart. There was really no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ All of the people I talked to were dealing with pain and trauma. As someone who had had a significant amount of pain and trauma in my life, I decided to be vulnerable with them. My vulnerability encouraged their vulnerability, and I saw people with completely different lenses.”

MaryAnne’s mission statement, to love unconditionally and help each other find hope and purpose, came out of an arm wrestle with God, she said. She was struggling with the fact that the people she was helping on the streets were not changing. They were still using drugs, still without homes, and she felt she needed to do more. In that moment, she felt God say that all He asked her to do was love them. So, MaryAnne learned unconditional love through serving these people. To love others without expectations of change and no judgement; to love them exactly where they are.

When asked what her hope was for the future of vulnerable people in Surrey, MaryAnne responded that she wishes to do complex trauma training. From her experience and the people she has interacted with, she believes that 100% of these people have suffered abuse in some form. By educating these people and providing another way to deal with their trauma, NightShift can get to the root of the problem. MaryAnne dreams to bring people along the continuum of recovery so that she can place people in transitional housing to be stabilized. She acknowledges that in this, NightShift has a responsibility to “hold the hand of someone for the rest of their life.” Although dealing with people’s trauma and addictions is  extremely hard work, MaryAnne is willing to do it.

In taking this step of faith back in 2004, MaryAnne has seen great transformation in the community she serves. She is someone who sees these people for what they are – people with stories and struggles, just like you and I. In all of this, MaryAnne can’t separate her work from her faith in God. Through faith in Him, she is able to serve this community and trust in His plans. She says that “He is a God of the impossible,” and hopes for the vulnerable people in Surrey to experience His love just as she has.

I am so thankful I was able to hear MaryAnne pour out her beautiful heart for her city. She inspired me to love others without limits, and I am grateful to be volunteering with her organization! With that concludes the Interview series.

PEER REVIEW #3

For my final peer review, I will be reviewing my classmate Quentin’s blog. His blog is called Assiduous Aesthetic, and it showcases his graphic design skills in the form of soccer jerseys for international, professional teams. Assiduous Aesthetic has a very clear motivation in terms of design. Quentin has made good use of his chosen blog theme to show who he is and his purpose behind the blog.

Considering the content on Assiduous Aesthetic, the general audience for this blog would be jersey designers, graphic designers, and soccer fans. Quentin has done a great job at choosing a niche that is specific enough to generate a targeted audience, which allows for lots of potential for marketing. His series, “My World Cup Redesign”, offers two redesigned uniforms for each soccer team in the world cup. He outlines his reasoning and rationale behind his design choices, and offers pictures of both the current uniforms and his newly designed uniforms. This content could be marketed towards those who are interested in the design of soccer uniforms. In general, the marketability of the content on Assiduous Aesthetic is high, especially around the time of FIFA. Being one of the most watched sports events in the world, Assiduous Aesthetic has the potential to have a lot of traffic driven to it. Mary Meeker (2018) points out that as the digitized world strives towards more creation, the competition will breed commercialism. The jerseys that Quentin has created have the potential to be monetized and marketed not only to international teams, but also to local soccer teams looking to redesign their jerseys.

The design of Assiduous Aesthetics provides clear calls to action regarding its content. On the homepage, there are three buttons that each call for the website user to explore deeper into the content that the blog offers. The first one says “Explore what happens when I fuse together soccer and graphic design,” the second one says, “Find out more about me and why I’m taking this project on,” and the third one says, “Take a look at my other work for Publishing 101.” Each of these calls to action not only works as a helpful guide through Quentin’s site, but also gives a quick snapshot to what his site is really about. Below this, Quentin provides a few links to his work. This gives users an easy way to explore his content without having to go through the hassle of navigating the site. Josh Constine (2016) wrote about how Facebook Messenger climbed its way to obtaining one billion users. He wrote that people were drawn to Messenger as it became easier and more convenient to use (Constine, 2016). Because Facebook values improving the day to day lives of its users, it prioritizes making their app easy to use, therefore attracting crowds (Constine, 2016). Similarly, Quentin has prioritized making his blog extremely clear and easy to navigate, which will attract and retain readers of his content.

Pulling from advice given by Travis Gertz (2015), I think that it is important for Quentin to take risks in the design aspect of his site. Not letting metrics and a need for high traffic produce a desire for normalization is essential for presenting content in new and innovative ways (Gertz, 2015). Although Assiduous Aesthetics is easy to navigate, it remains simple. Simplicity is not necessarily a bad characteristic, however, I think there is opportunity for Quentin to incorporate his love for design into the fabric of his blog. A unique design will allow for marketing opportunities on social media that catch the eyes of his potential audience.

Altogether, Quentin’s blog seems to have a clear direction in terms of content, and a solid audience. Reaching past a simplistic design approach will really give Assiduous Aesthetics the ability to market his designs in a unique way.

PROCESS POST: Create a goal (week 10)

There’s not much traffic coming through to my blog, so I’m not sure how much weight the statistics that are offered by Google Analytics hold in terms of seeing how my content is being received. From what I can see, my bounce rate is sitting well at just over 26%, and the bulk of my page views (39.08%) sit with my homepage.

I created a goal for my blog conversions called “Time Spent.” I found it kind of funny to make a goal, considering I basically get no traffic to my site. But, maybe one day this goal will be put to good use. I wanted to focus my goal on the duration of time spent on my site because I want to know that people are taking the time to actually read my posts. I set the goal for 3 minutes, because I figured that is a good amount of time for someone to navigate my site, find a post, and read it. Currently, the average amount of time people spend on a page on my site is just over 2 minutes. Although it’s nice to imagine people staying on my site for longer, I am content to start out with the goal of keeping people on my site long enough to read one post. As I get more established with my blog, I would hope that people would engage with my content and explore my posts for longer.  

PROCESS POST: Create an Ad (week 9)

Considering the content of my site, I think that monetizing it would look like finding a creative way to raise money for NightShift Ministries. I saw another organization do a campaign for youth homelessness, and I think it would work extremely well in the context of my blog. The idea is that people would volunteer to sleep outside for one night and ask their friends and family to support them in this by donating money towards NightShift. The goal of my blog partnering with NightShift for this campaign would be to raise awareness for people sleeping on the streets throughout the cold winter months, and to raise funds towards the meals and other resources that NightShift provides for these people each day.

The call to action on social media would look a bit like this:

On November 27, sleep outside with us and help us to reach our goal of raising $1000 towards NightShift Ministries, an organization that supports our friends who sleep on the street every night. To sign up, click here! To donate, click here!

I would aim for this to be a full campaign, partnered with NightShift, that would draw attention to both their organization and what they do to support the vulnerable in Surrey, as well as drawing attention to the stories told through my blog.

Another idea I had is to do a “Closet Cleanout” campaign to encourage people to donate clothing they aren’t wearing to NightShift. This would be held at NightShift, and all clothing brought would be donated to them. Additionally, I could get the name of my site out into the public because a lot of people are interested in helping others in the winter time. It would be a good opportunity for me to get the name of my blog out there, while simultaneously drawing in clothing donations for the organization.

The call to action on social media would be a version of this:

Do you have any extra coats, sweaters, gloves, or boots? Winter is approaching, and our friends are living on the street. Participate in our Closet Cleanout with NightShift on November 22nd to give to those in need.

These ads would be posted on Instagram and Facebook. I would post them on Instagram because that’s where my target audience (young adults) would most likely see the ads. I would post them on Facebook because Facebook is a very events based app. I would hope that these ads would draw attention to homelessness in Surrey, NightShift, and my blog.