On Sep. 24 and Oct. 8, 2015 at 6:00 PM, about fifty Laguna Blanca Students assembled at Alameda Park for the weekly Thursday meal sharings with the homeless. The organizations that come together to create the meal sharings are: Doctors Without Borders, who take care of medical care, Common Ground, who takes care of helping house the homeless, Westmont College, who take care of providing clothing and other essentials for the homeless and a couple local churches who take care of the food. The purpose of this meeting was to interact with some of the most vulnerable members of our community and pass out the socks from the LBS Middle School through Upper School Sock Drive.

At the beginning of the first park meeting Steven Gruver, the Volunteer Coordinator for Common Ground, reviewed the information covered at the Sep. 12 Outreach Training. Gruver reassured everyone that the park is a safe environment and that the homeless are humans too. Gruver also reminded everyone about the myth busting from the training, emphasizing that not all of the homeless are mentally ill and/or under the influence and only about 10% are schizophrenic. He included that the things that students saw and experienced were going to be very intense so students should plan to relax after the outreach. After Gruver’s talk, the students dispersed into teams of four or five including the group leader from Westmont College or Common Ground. Every team grabbed a handful of clean white socks and headed off to the center of the park where the majority of the homeless were lining up to get food and hanging out with the community.

After less than two minutes of being with community, the teams started offering socks to the homeless. With many groups, after the socks were given, conversations would initiate and questions like “Where are you from?” and “How long have you been in Santa Barbara?” were asked. Clara Hillis ’17 wrote in her reflective survey that “meeting some homeless people who had a strong sense of humor and positive outlook made it easier to talk to someone and still feel empathy but not so much pity.” After hearing the stories from Santa Barbara’s homeless community, the fifty students met again and were given chances to share with the group what he or she had learned in the park. People shared things that surprised them as well as specific stories from the homeless.

A few days before going to the park, the students gathered in Spaulding Auditorium  to fill out empathy surveys and then after both meal sharings, students filled out the same empathy surveys as well as a more narrative survey. What is now called “The Sock Institute” collected data from these surveys to compile and put onto a poster explaining the project that will be presented and shown by a couple students at the International Street Medicine Conference in San Jose, California on Oct. 15-16, 2015. After the conference, “The Sock Institute” will meet again and discuss further plans to reach out to the homeless community. In the reflective survey Kelly Bicket ’18 writes, “I want to help them get housing and start a new life.”