Proposal for Putting a Face to Poverty

Here’s a pitch I made to St. Stephen’s School today for a service learning project.

Proposal for Putting a Face to Poverty, a journalistic series (starting with a trial article/poster)

Goals

  • Convey empathy and compassion: Personalize poverty and the impoverished in the St. Stephen’s community; make it real by putting a face and story to it
  • Teach critical thinking: Understand that poverty — its causes and solutions to address it — are complex
  • Improve writing: Help a young person become a better journalist
  • Start a discussion: What is our relationship with poverty?

What

  • A series of web articles about beggars and homeless people in Rome
  • A series of posters at the school with the story summarized

How

  • Written collaboratively by a St. Stephen’s student (fluent in Italian) and me
  • Sit down over lunch/breakfast (paid by me) and interview a “homeless” person or beggar with written profile and photos

Questions

Today

  • What is your situation?
  • Where do you sleep?
  • What do you eat?
  • Why are you in Rome?
  • Why do you beg?
  • How long have you been in this situation?

Yesterday

  • How did it come that you’re here?
  • What did you do before you were here?

Tomorrow

  • If you could work, what would you do?
  • What prevents you from working?
  • What help do you want?