Becoming visible

What?

What most people think as a homeless person is that guy in dirty clothes asking for money in the metro. He quite propably is homeless, but there are also many other ways of being homeless. Many homeless people have children, some have jobs, some live in motels or hotels and not all use drugs.

Mark Horvath aka @hardlynormal on Twitter is utilising social media to fight homelessness. He himself used to live on the street in Hollywood in the 90s. He's active on Twitter and has started a YouTube -channel called invisiblepeople.tv to tell the stories of homeless people. Since last November he has interviewed numerous people who don't have the luxury of having a place to call home and posted all these stories on YouTube. Most of us walk past homeless people daily without even notising. Mark Horvath is making these people visible by telling their stories and encouraging homeless people to tell their stories themselfs vai different online services.

In addition to filming and posting the different stories of homeless people he has made helpfull videos simply explaining how to join Twitter or how to set up a gmail account. These are part of a website called We Are Visible helping homeless themselves share their stories with the world and become visible.  This may sound simple, but it may be very empowering for someone who's lived on the streets for some time.

Why it makes me happy?

Of course the fact that people ar homeless does not make me happy at all, quite the contrary. But I think this is a wonderfull way to make the world just a tad better place to live in. Raising awareness is a key to finding a solution. I think the videos in the project are truly powerful and Mark's personal experience of what it really is to be homeless gives a lot credibility to the project. After seeing these videos it should be impossible to go on ignoring the homeless people on the streets. Mark is also handing the initiative to the homeless themselves and thus taking the project to another level. He's not just helping people, he's empowering people to help themselves.

I think this project is a wonderful example of using social media for non-commercial purposes. This is a relatively cheap way of raising awareness and at least in most western countries computers and internet are accessible even to homeless. Through Invisible People I discovered a whole world of homeless people blogging and tweeting and sharing their stories. This has helped me to understand the phenomena better and think about more usefull ways to help people who have lost their homes for one reason or another. Unfortunately most of these people live in the UK or US and there's little I can physically do to help, but at least I can share the links and spread awareness.



More info:

• Invisible People
• haRdLy NOrMal 
• Mark Horvath on Twitter 
• Invisible People on YouTube 
• We Are Visible
• The Adventures of Homeless Girl 
• The Girls Guide to Homelessness
• Lost Awareness

Take Back the Blog

I started this blog in January and didn't manage to write anything else than the opening post. I started writing few other entries, but wasn't happy with them. Now I've decided to take things more lightly and simply start by posting entries about things that make me happy. If it eventually leads into more in-depth writing about happiness and the science behind it, fine. If it doesn't I've started yet an other silly lifestyle blog, and that's not too bad either. At least I have an excuse to write something in English and a virtual notebook for myself.

New Year

Starting something new is everyone's traditon for the new year. I haven't usually bothered to do any resolutions or started new hobbies in the beginning of a new year. This year isn't actually any different. I'm not going to promise anything or change much, but I will continue a prosess that has started years ago.

When I was still young and naive people asked quite often what I want to do when I grow up. All I could think of as an answer was: 'To become happy.' Even I thought that this wasn't a good answer, and people kept asking what it means for real. But as I've learnt more about life in general and various other things in detail I still haven't discovered what I want to do when I'm all grown up. But what I have realised during the past six months is that maybe there isn't any point to thrive for anything else than happiness.

There are still some issues whit this though: happiness is quite a broad concept. Because I believe in logic and analyzis, I feel that I need to know what happiness is before I can achieve it. So this blog is part of my journey towards happier me. I'm going to write about what I think happiness is and also about what happiness is generally thought to be. In my opinion health and happiness are connected. To become happier I also need to be healthier. This I believe can mostly be achieved by eating more healthily. So I'm going to blog about eating and food aswell.

In todays society productivity seems to be the key to everything especially at the work place. I personally believe that happier and healthier people are always more productive than people on the verge of a nervous breakdown and heart attack. Personally I don't really care about being more productive at the moment, but I believe I can't help becoming more productive if I become happier.

I think happiness is something very personal. What makes me happy probably doesn't work for other people. I still think some things are quite universal and maybe my thought on happiness will help someone else to become even a little bit happier. Thus I will also blog about things that make me happy.

So welcome to follow my journey towards healthier, happier and more productive life!