GU299: General Education Capstone, Researching Cultural Challenges

Serving Learning Organization
Angelia Briscoe
GU299: General Education Capstone
Instructor: Mr Dolen
December 17, 2017
Serving Learning Organization
Homelessness is a pertinent issue in every community. Rarely do people become homeless out of choice. With harsh economic conditions, high living standards, joblessness and abandoned children, homelessness is on the rise. Thus, the dire need to address this matter. Homelessness would mean the presence of other problems such as hunger, poverty, and crime. Hence, curbing this issue may reduce the occurrence of other societal evils. Service learning facilitates the development of the personal relationship between people or service providers and the homeless individuals. It enables one to have a deeper understanding of the complexity of the homelessness issue (Knecht & Martinez, 2009).
The Urban Ministry Center is a community organization that caters for homeless people. It is an interfaith, non-profit facility in Charlotte. The institution started as a temporary home giver to homeless people through a Room in the Inn program. The goal of the organization is to keep the homeless individuals from the freezing cold on winter nights. The homeless are referred to as ‘neighbors’ and the institution aims at showing love and affection to the needy person in society. Apart from this, the institution raises awareness about homelessness in the neighborhood, promotes civic attitudes and aims to change stereotyping homelessness (Buch & Harden, 2011).
Homelessness persists in our society. However, having collaborative measures to address the issue like the Urban Ministry Center would minimize its occurrence. Students performing service learning in such an institution get real-life experience with the homeless. They learn diverse perspectives of homeless, cultural competency, interpersonal and communication skills. These abilities are never taught in books or in classrooms (Brown, 2006).
Some of the issues as mentioned above are very common in the current society. The most obvious are the issues of poverty and crime. It is a result poverty and high cost of living, that crime exists. Young adults are frustrated of the expensive lifestyle that they cannot afford basic needs of housing. Consequently, they result in the robbery, use of illegal drugs, and other misconduct. (Ramesh, 2010) A fifth of the homeless who check into facilities offering shelter for the homeless have committed imprisonable offenses. They purposely commit the crimes so as to get off the streets and find a home. Approximately, thirty percent of them admit having committed a minor crime, for example, shoplifting or anti-social behavior. Their reason for being on the wrong side of the law is to go into custody for at least a night. Further, some of the homeless reported that they avoided bail after committing an imprisonable offense. The reason for those decision...