I’m an Advocate: August Mallory

This Veterans Day, we thank members of the armed forces for their service. We also recognize that too many of these brave men and women experience homelessness when they leave the service. Today we hear from August Mallory, who served in the US Navy for 10 years, and later slept on the streets after the warehouse where he worked closed.

Spark Change Podcast Episode 12: Analytics

Watch on YouTube.com

Measuring the impact of online content is vital for nonprofits and advocacy organizations. We go over setting goals, share some tips and tools for quantitative measurements, and touch on the importance of qualitative measurements.

“Stepping Into Homelessness”: Domestic Violence and the Power of Empathy

Vince Matulionis and Catherine Hinrichsen talked about ending homelessness in their StoryCorps recording. Photo courtesy of StoryCorps.

Many families in our community face “an untenable choice”: Staying in a domestic violence situation, or leaving and stepping into homelessness. In a new three-minute audio story, edited from a StoryCorps recording, Vince Matulionis of United Way of King County tells colleague Catherine Hinrichsen of Seattle University about how empathy for that experience drives his work.

Culture Watch: Jewel Challenges Listeners to Re-think Public Housing

Jewel sings "Home to Me," a song she wrote to raise awareness about the need for public housing. Image from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ReThinkHousing?fref=photo" target="_blank">ReThink's Facebook page</a>. — Jewel sings "Home to Me," a song she wrote to raise awareness about the need for public housing. Image from ReThink's Facebook page.

Jewel, the singer/songwriter who first entered the spotlight in 1995 with her hit single "Who Will Save Your Soul," recently released a song to support the ReThink public housing initiative. Give it a listen.

Violence Against Women: So Common, It’s Cultural

Violence against women is more ubiquitous than many of us would like to think. Under-reported and rarely prosecuted, this type of violence says as much about its perpetrators as it does about our culture’s continued ambivalence about the value of women. Image from <a href="http://pixabay.com/en/woman-face-contour-burnout-blank-73403/" target="_blank">pixabay.com</a>. — Violence against women is more ubiquitous than many of us would like to think. Under-reported and rarely prosecuted, this type of violence says as much about its perpetrators as it does about our culture’s continued ambivalence about the value of women. Image from pixabay.com.

Today’s American women have more opportunity, empowerment and success than ever. Yet violence is a persistent problem. Especially when it occurs in the intersection of race, power, poverty and history, large segments of the female population are left without support or justice from our legal system. Perry Firth from the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness shares disturbing statistics, and takes a close look at the cultural forces that cause and sustain violence against women in this thought-provoking post.

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