On a field trip to the Vancouver Aquarium, Edward Chen noticed many of his classmates averting their eyes as their bus navigated the hardscrabble streets of the Downtown Eastside.
“It’s not something I’ve been in contact with too much,” he said of the neighbourhood’s tent encampments and homeless residents slumped in alleys and on sidewalks. “Living in the Tri-Cities, homelessness is less visible.”
Now, Chen and four classmates in the Con X Leadership program at Coquitlam’s Gleneagle Secondary are using technology and social media to foster empathy and compassion among their peers for people struggling with homelessness.
They’ve created The Blue Shed Podcast on YouTube and Spotify to share stories of people who’ve lived through homelessness and come out the other side, as well as community members working on the front lines of the homelessness issue in the Tri-Cities.
Chen said the group, that also includes Grade 12 students Mahtab Khangura and Matthew Jang, as well as Olivia Vasquez and Marisa Bassetto who are in Grade 11, originally wanted to construct a special blue shed where they could collect first-hand interviews from people experiencing homelessness, but they were advised that might not be the safest approach.
He said the pivot forced them to reevaluate their own ideas about homelessness and goals for their project.
“We had to be more creative.”
For the first episode of their podcast, the group connected with a pair of outreach workers at the Hope For Freedom Society, Amanda and Aaron. They had survived their own experiences with addiction and homelessness and are now working to support those still enduring struggles.
Jang said their stories help humanize the issue of homelessness but also offer a glimmer of hope that hard work and perseverance can pay off.
“It’s important to make the issue feel personal and relevant. It opens doors to realizing the issue can’t be pushed to the side,” he said.
A future episode will visit with Macarthy Whyzel, a student at Douglas College in Coquitlam who’s created the Uplifting Group that distributes bottled water, nutritious snacks and other comforts like toiletries and socks to people struggling to survive on the streets of the Tri-Cities.
Vasquez said sharing such stories helps raise awareness of the work that is going on to help ease the homelessness issue in the area, often in the shadows.
Khangura said the group’s work so far has helped build up his own understanding of homelessness.
“I was mostly sheltered from it,” he said. “But you see there’s more to the person than what you see on the streets.”
Chen said the group decided a podcast would be the best way to reach their peers as most of their friends are avid podcast consumers. They’re also able to break out clips to post on social media platforms like Instagram, broadening the reach of their message.
“Our aim is to reach the younger generation,” added Khangura.
Because, said Jang, “even at our age you can make an impact.”
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