Inspirational Fundraising Activities to End Homelessness: Homeless Entrepreneur City Tour

Written by Andrew Funk

Are you currently attending a university like Mays Business School (Texas A&M)? Is your university thinking about creating social impact in cities like Barcelona and Madrid in Spain? Would you like to get to know the people you’d like to support and the stories in the streets of their city as well as the best way to collaborate?

If you’ve answered YES to all three questions, we have an inspirational fundraising activity just for you and your university!

*Important Note: Homeless Entrepreneur is able to provide Homeless Entrepreneur City Tours in cities where we have Homeless Entrepreneurs, who are currently in our HELP program or have graduated. We design the city tour specifically for each group.

Homeless Entrepreneur City Tour

Our first Homeless Entrepreneur City Tour took place on August 5, 2016. We guided students and teachers from Mays Business School (Texas A&M) through the streets of Madrid.

We met up at La Puerta del Sol and ended up in the same place, where our first Homeless Entrepreneur, Marcos, read a poem called “Society,“ which he specifically wrote for our City Tour guests. During this experience, we shared the untold stories of these streets as well as our vision of how homelessness should be addressed. The students made cardboard signs and took pictures with other people in the street to generate content they ultimately used to create awareness online via social media and offline with those who crossed their path.

3 Reasons Why You Should Do a City Tour with Homeless Entrepreneur (HE)

  1. Knowledge: Understand the current situation regarding poverty and homelessness in the city you are visiting. We provide a complete vision of our innovative, international model to address and end homelessness thanks to the Homeless Entrepreneur community members who participate in this city tour e.g. an HE team member, an HE beneficiary and a volunteer and/or intern.

  2. Recognition: The interactive nature of this city tour opens up the opportunity for the guests to recognize how they can participate by diving deeper into the issues via spontaneous conversations with people experiencing homelessness in a safe, friendly environment.

  3. Change: Create direct change and social impact in your local community by raising funds thanks to the event and decide exactly where they are destined. You can support the following items:

    1. General Support

    2. Support Key Programs

    3. Buy Products & Fund Projects

    4. Donate & Support Individuals

Inspirational Fundraising Activities to End Homelessness: Interactive Talk (Expat Communities)

Written by Andrew Funk

Are you part of an expat community like Internations? Is your community thinking about creating social impact in your city in the future? Would you like to get to know the people you’d like to support and the best way to collaborate?

If you’ve answered YES to all three questions, we have an inspirational fundraising activity just for you and your community!

*Important Note: Homeless Entrepreneur is able to provide interactive talks throughout the world. Transportation costs, which will be discussed in the exploratory meeting, should be covered by the organization inviting Homeless Entrepreneur to give the interactive talk.

An Interactive Talk

At the beginning of Homeless Entrepreneur’s journey as an association in 2016, we were invited to speak to a group of expats thanks to Internations’ Barcelona Chapter.

We shared our vision of how homelessness should be addressed and the first Homeless Entrepreneur, Marcos, shed light on his personal story and read a poem he wrote specifically for the expats attending the interactive talk.

3 Reasons Why You Should Do an Interactive Talk with Homeless Entrepreneur (HE)

  1. Knowledge: Understand the current situation regarding poverty and homelessness in your city. We provide a complete vision of our innovative, international model to address and end homelessness thanks to the Homeless Entrepreneur community members who participate in this interactive talk e.g. an HE team member, an HE beneficiary and a volunteer and/or intern.

  2. Recognition: The interactive nature of this talk opens up the opportunity for the guests to recognize how they can participate by diving deeper into the issues via our Q&A session.

  3. Change: Create direct change and social impact in your local community by raising funds thanks to the event and decide exactly where they are destined. You can support the following items:

    1. General Support

    2. Support Key Programs

    3. Buy Products & Fund Projects

    4. Donate & Support Individuals




How to Overcome the Gaps and Prejudices of Poverty

Written by Lara Hupperten

Homelessness is a well-known description of a situation in which the affected person lives on the street with barely enough to survive. But there is no official definition since 1992, which causes difficulties in solving the problem of homelessness. The best description in Europe is most likely ETHOS, which is the European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion developed by FEANTSA.

Little has really change and most people use the word homelessness in its most limited sense to refer to people sleeping rough, which means in the street. Many people experiencing homelessness need to beg for money and search for a safe corner with limited protection to none to sleep on. Additionally, the number of homeless people continually increases. 7.98 billion people are living on Earth right now and around 100 million are considered homeless.

Many citizens have seen someone lying on a bench with dirty clothes and all his or her belongings next to him or her, and we all should admit that we are passing by most of the time without even noticing them.

3 Common Misconceptions & How to Overcome Them

  • Most people become homeless due to to drugs or mental health issues. To overcome this misconception, governments must collect greater data regarding the causes of homelessness and promote the results to all ages of society i.e. kindergarden to university, the workplace and even residencies for the aged.

  • People experiencing homeless are lazy and do not want to work. To overcome this misconception, we must build safe bridges of communication, so those with and without housing can have heart-to-heart conversations. Knowledge leads to greater understanding and empathy.

  • There’s an excess of services and support to help homeless people. To overcome this misconception, we must give people suffering from poverty a space where they can explain the opportunities and limits of the support they receive. The majority of the services that are provided are assistance based instead of empowerment based, which means that people are able to have a comfortably numb life instead of one s/he is excited about.

A lack of interest in overcoming the gaps and prejudices of poverty leads to a lack of knowledge and ultimately a lack of recognition, which the follow interviewee highlights in her quote.

“Society tends to believe that homeless people deserve to be where they are without knowing their individual stories. Consequently, most people pass them by on the street without acknowledging their existence.”
— Meritxell Martin I Pardo, Ph.D.Transition Network Facilitator at Generalitat de Catalunya

A comment on this issue drives this point home.

The same individual even shared his thoughts about how to address some of the stigmas.

Homelessness can happen to everyone. It could be the loss of a job because the company is closing or the financial situation of the state or nation, especially during conflicts like Ukraine, which leads to higher bills and inflation.

Homeless people face difficulties that deteriorate their physical and mental health at a faster rate than when they have a safe place to call home and a steady job. Unfortunately, most of society tends to rely on prejudices instead learning more about those affected by poverty. We have learned to categorize people by their appearance and their economic position.

Once we recognize the circle of prejudices, we can start overcoming them.

“People should become more open-minded to the others suffering from homelessness.”
— Jiejun Emily Yang, HE health intern and psychology student at the University of California Santa Cruz

The way of thinking needs to be changed, so more human beings have access to the services and support promised to them by their national, regional and local government. Also, the media needs to go beyond click bait, and participate in the process of empowering people out of poverty. For example, service helplines like the Homeless Helpine can be included as a call-to-action at the end of each piece of news. People experiencing homelessness need a voice to tell their individual stories, which will provide greater clarity to their real situation; and a presence by being included as an active, working citizen, which is the aim of Homeless Entrepreneur’s HELP program. We won’t end homelessness for a 100 million people in a day or a year, but we can start reducing it today!

“Hope is failing and succeeding while always proceeding.”
— Andrew Funk, President of Homeless Entrepreneur & Social Impact Activist for Homeless People

*Thank you for reading this article! If you would like to contribute your thoughts, pictures or videos to this article or believe you have found mistakes and/or misinformation, please contact us and tell us about it by clicking on the button next to this text, so we can take your feedback into consideration.

Connect with the author, Lara Hupperten, via LinkedIn!