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?