Personal Introductions (name, what you do here, etc.) -- EVERYONE
Streetwork Introduction
Streetwork Project is a non- profit agency that assists runaway and homeless youth. Our programs include two drop in sites, a residential site, and an outreach program. We assist our target population from a harm reduction perspective. Guided by its philosophical approach starting where individuals are, rather than where we think they should be, and placing emphasis on the underlying issues rather than the surface behavior, we realized that our relationships with our youth evolved into more trusting and sincere ones. This particular outreach program is conducting street outreach to areas that the commercial sex trade is active. This program aims to interact with young people on the street who are involved in sex work and provide safe sex supplies, street counseling, and referrals to programs that will fit the presenting needs of the young person.
Questions
Understanding Poverty and Homelessness
Our program is geared toward servicing homeless and at risk youth. Most of the young people that we work with are chronically homeless and impoverished
What is your understanding of why people are poor and homeless ?
Diversity ( discuss our mission to promote tolerance & create an anti-racist environment.
As a collective, we acknowledge how racism, sexism, homophobia and heterosexism can lead to the marginalization of certain groups in society. Therefore in our efforts to support the empowerment of youth, we recognize that these issues must be addressed openly while constantly challenging ourselves in the process.
How do you see yourself managing conflicts and issues that may arise in the face of racial differences, for example;
How would you address racially offensive remarks on an intraracial level.
LGBTQQ (with possible scenario/ example)
Many of our clients are LGBT or questioning. A. How do you view servicing these clients as compared to clients who identify as heterosexual? What might you perceive to be some unique challenges faced by LGBT youth?
Harm Reduction
Streetwork adopted a harm reduction approach in the early 90’s. As humans we have biases and prejudices. Therefore, it is our belief that to truly incorporate Harm Reduction in a genuine, compassionate and non-judgmental manner, requires that one have some sense of self-awareness and engage in process of self reflection. We work with a population that engage in many behaviors that might be upsetting to us, such as prostitution, mugging, pimping, child abuse and neglect, etc. What do
