Do You A Flavor (人生百味）is an organization in Taipei which is focusing on using innovative immersive approach to get the public involve in several issues about the homeless people. They want to let more and more of the public to rebuild the connection as well as understand this group of vulnerable people with more interesting ways, because sometimes it is quite deep and sad when people think of helping the homeless people. For example, as for me, I think the issue is too big, I would love to but I don’t know how to start to help. So this organization have created some meaningful activities to connect the public and the homeless people.
For example, the Stone Soup project:
They would invite the participants to have dinner with the homeless people on the streets, the both sides are having dinner together and having conversation during the meal. And more meaningful is that the meal is cooked by the participants. They are not only trying to make the public to know more about this group of vulnerable, but also, I think it’s the most important, they want to let the homeless people have the real connection with the public again. They are trying to rebuild the confidence for the homeless people to have strength to have the real touch with people and hope they will embrace the life again.
I talked with Ying-Jie and Jing-Ru via Google Meet on the topic around the impact when the pandemic hits quite hard in Taipei and if there’s something they have found difficult to deal with. Because the first outbreak in May was actually from the area where most of the homeless people located, Wan-Hua(萬華) district. So, they had huge concern about this group of vulnerable people, including how to deliver the food to them in this hard time and how to located them with a shelter to avoid for being affected by Covid-19. Because the policy in Taipei is quite different than in other cities in Taiwan when it comes to locating the homeless people during the soft lockdown. Like in the city where I lived, Kaohsiung city, the city hall had arranged several hotels for locating the homeless people in Kaohsiung during this time to avoid the threat of Covid-19. But in Taipei, the city hall has done little movement for homeless people, and it led several homeless people tested positive of Covid-19 unfortunately.
I talked with them about the virtue signaling as well, they are actually quite having positive attitude towards this. Because they say if you know you are doing the right thing, then just go for it. It is inevitable that you’re doing the thing without other purpose. At last, I have mentioned the project, called Street Friends, I want to build up which is to have a set of pictures of fashion editorial involve with homeless people to show to the public and hoping the public have more focus on this issue and having more caring towards them. They say the idea is quite new, but they say if I want people to have more attention on this issue, I must have my project to be more immersive and have some interaction and connection between the public and the homeless people.
Then after had a great talk with them, I’ve became quite not sure about my original idea, because I think my intervention is quite weak. Then I did a little survey with my friends to test if my idea is strong enough to gain the attention towards the homeless people or do they think it’s an interesting approach. They say it’s interesting but they didn’t see the connection and they think it seems that something is missing.
So I’m brainstorming a lot afterwards, then…
To be continued…
P.S.
The mail I’ve sent to the organization: