Visual Diary 4 Post 2: IHS Meal Service
Post 2: For my second visual diary post, the example that came to mind is one of my local homeless shelters. The shelter, called the Institute for Human Services (IHS), offers a meal service/distribution to its residents and to other homeless individuals in the surrounding community. The unique thing about the meal service is that IHS allows its residents to volunteer as servers. While distributing free meals to a homeless community would often fall into the helping category, in this situation, I think there is more of an equal relationship, which makes it a service instead. The homeless individuals are given the equal opportunity to give back to their community, just as their community (through IHS) is helping them. It makes them less of a "helpless" party, and in inviting the homeless residents to serve food alongside the IHS staff, IHS is treating them as equals. I am inspired by the way that IHS conducts its meal distribution to be inclusive of their residents, and I think it would be great if other homeless shelters used a similar approach. (Image retrieved from IHS website).









