Associate Chaplain Zac Luben and junior Dacia Hannel put together care packages for the Los Angeles homeless Friday, Jan. 28. Students placed essentials such as socks, granola bars, wipes, hand sanitizer and water bottles in the kits. Photos by Sammie Wuensche
The Community Engagement and Service branch of the Hub for Spiritual Life put on a Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week from Jan. 24-28. Pepperdine has observed this event for years to spread awareness and serve the community. At the event tent, students passing by were able to stop, create care packages and learn more about hunger and homelessness.
Olivia Robinson, the assistant director for community engagement and service, said this awareness week is one of many Pepperdine puts on. The goal of this particular event was to continue its tradition in raising awareness of the issue and juxtaposing short-term change with long-term change.
“Short-term impacts, such as giving people kits and making sure people have a snack or can get clean, but also preparing the opportunity to have a long-term impact,” Robinson said. “So at our advocacy station, people can look into what legislation is going on in their areas regarding housing and food insecurity. So that way, they can give a call and take action, or they can find information to follow up with.”
The bagels and coffee at the front of the table enticed students to stop and help make care packages to hand out to the unhoused community. While students created their kits, Robinson answered questions students had on the importance and relevance of the topic.
“Hunger and homelessness has been a growing issue in an area for years, both on a local scale and on a national scale,” Robinson said. “It’s really important to engage where you are locally, so you can see what’s going on and look at the facts.”
Second-year Natalie Driscoll is in the Food and Recovery Network and volunteered at the event on Thursday. Driscoll said she chose to volunteer in the free time she had to help serve the community.
“I feel like it’s really easy for us to not think about it because we’re in college and we have our own things, but if you take the time to realize how lucky we are to have what we have, and then realize I can just put two hours in my day to make some bags, then it makes you feel good,” Driscoll said.
Bringing awareness to the impact of mental health on homelessness seemed to be a highlighted issue.
The Do Good Bus was parked beside the table, creating a casual, open environment to discuss mental health and hunger and homelessness.
The Do Good Bus is a nonprofit organization that conducts “talks” in various communities, where they bring together “thought leaders,” which are go-to experts in their fields of discussion, “to spark passionate conversations & drive change.” Thought leader Darby Kennerly sparked conversations with students at this particular event.
“We’re focusing on mental health as one of our main pillars for this year,” Kennerly said. “So we just felt like it was a good way to connect with the Hub for Spiritual Life and bring awareness to homelessness in the hunger situation and will be on campus more and more.”
Do Good Bus Director Merlin Clarke also started conversations with students by drawing pieces of paper from a bowl, each filled with facts about mental health and homelessness. One of the papers pulled had the shocking fact that within the unhoused population in Los Angeles, 40% are graduates of high school and 32% have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
“[The talks] give the group an awareness around what the problem is and hopefully some hope as to how it can change,” Clarke said. “[The goal] whether we’re talking about mental health or talking about racial injustice, is to have amazing students to have this collective consciousness. The awareness is raised, and then [we ask] what we can do together to change.”
The Hunger and Homelessness Awareness week brought about a short-term change in creating kits for the local unhoused community and encouraged long-term change through conversation, awareness and future service opportunities.
“I would encourage students that even when it’s not an awareness week to still engage and find out about the issues within our community, whether it’s the Malibu community or their hometowns,” Robinson said. “That students be aware of what’s going on in the world around them because it’s so much beyond just what’s on our hearts and minds.”
____________________
Follow the Graphic on Twitter: @PeppGraphic
Email Meghan Young: meghan.young@pepperdine.edu
