Doorway Utilises Social Media to Give Guests a ‘Voice’

The Doorway blog site, http://doorwayproject.wordpress.com was launched in July 2010.

Guests, as well as volunteers working at the Project, have already started telling their stories and sharing their thoughts. This has included a very personal account of the horrors of alcoholism, raw in its honesty, but written with remarkable humour.

Doorway’s involvement with social media began with Twitter. It became apparent that this offered great opportunities for networking with other agencies, sharing information, and improving the ability of Doorway to signpost for guests.

This soon led to linking with a number of individuals working with the homeless, or who are homeless themselves, and their blog sites. Inspiration was particularly obtained from Mark Horvath* (‘hardlynormal’) from the USA, and from Homeless Girl** in this country.

Doorway could see the power of blog sites in bringing personal stories out into the public domain. The homeless and marginalised can be seen by wider society as an amorphous mass, but each of Doorway’s guests is an individual human being, with a story to tell. Telling their stories may help them come to terms with their experiences. Hearing them may give identification, hope, empathy, practical help, to others. So Doorway sought to create a blog site that guests can access at the Library, or at the drop-in sessions, so they can tell their stories, and share their thoughts in their own way, in their own words.

Doorway has seen blog sites cross-pollinating, and homeless people given concrete help to move forward from their homeless state. Most of all Doorway has seen the emotional power of individual voices and stories, and the social power of these voices linking up in ways driven by them, not by those in authority.

As Mark Horvath said: “Besides the homeless message, there is an even more powerful one in what I do; social media has given us (anyone) the power to change the world”.

Lisa Lewis, Project Manager said: “I am incredibly proud of the way in which volunteers and guests at Doorway have enthusiastically embraced the chance to contribute to the new community blog”.

“We are starting to prove, already, that guests have very powerful and emotional stories to tell and we can use the traditional means of ‘storytelling’ to very effectively increase awareness of the complex issues surrounding homelessness and marginalisation both within our local community, and also on a global scale through the use of social media.”

www.doorwayproject.wordpress.com