February has been a pretty laid back month for me, although I have experienced a couple new things in the city. For example, I’ve tried some new restaurants like: Maccabees, Bucharest Grill, and Fountain Bistro. Due to this crazy cold, I still find myself hibernating a lot, so I haven’t done anything really out of the ordinary. I figure once it warms up, I’ll venture out and explore even more in the city! In the meantime, we just wrapped up our third challenge on homelessness with our non-profit partner, COTS, the Coalition on Temporary Shelter This challenge was easily one of my favorites to date.

We were assigned to different COTS stakeholder groups, and were charged with developing a marketing campaign. I was assigned to the Consumer group, where my team and I had the opportunity to interview people who actually lived at the shelter. Now to be honest, I was nervous about this at first. I didn’t want them thinking we were trying to exploit them, or that we wanted to use whatever they confided in us to our benefit-I wanted them to feel comfortable. After our first interview all of these nervous feelings went away. They were all so willing to share their story with us, and several of them were even excited that we WANTED to hear their story. Many of them feel like society doesn’t see them, or if they do, they’re immediately put into a separate category, as if their not even people. They wanted to stress to us that homelessness isn’t a disease or condition, it’s just a situation that any of us can be in. That was a very valuable lesson for me: Never forget about the little people, or rather treat everyone the same. Treat the CEO of a Fortune 500 company the same way you treat someone with very little: with respect. I feel like I do that but its important to be reminded.

As we continued to interview people, we also had the opportunity to serve breakfast or dinner- I served dinner twice, and I loved it. In fact, I hope to go back and do it again. As I handed out food and people came by in line, I was greeted with many “thank yous” and “ God Bless You.” People who the world would think had so little, had so much. Many of them were so joyful and happy despite their situations, and it was inspiring to see. It reminded me that the richest man isn’t necessarily the person with money and a lot of material things. By the end of the challenge my group and I had composed a marketing campaign entitled “One Step Away.” This campaign highlights how all of us are just one step away from homelessness. Any of us could lose our job, or become ill, causing us any of us to be in a bind. This challenge was a reminder of that for me.