For Katie Young, the biggest lesson she learned from helping run the Community Compassion Collective was simple: social networks matter. Young, a student employee at the Ballard Center for Social Impact in the BYU Marriott School of Business, spent 13 weeks leading the pilot program that connects people experiencing homelessness with local community members.
“The Ballard Labs are designed to work through really understanding social problems and then, in collaboration with people experiencing them, develop an intervention or practice,” says Young, who has worked with the Ballard Center’s homelessness team for about two years.
Young, from Pleasant Grove, Utah, and her team compiled more than 100 pages of secondary research about homelessness and then met with community workers and people living on the streets to talk about solutions. Young says that the team decided to focus their efforts for the first year on women, because research showed they are especially vulnerable. Specifically, Young's team wanted to address the lack of social support networks, which Young says can perpetuate homelessness.
“The Community Compassion Collective was designed to help people build relationships in really healthy and sustainable ways—and hopefully help participants experience some personal transformation through it,” Young says. In weekly meetings, 20 women (10 women experiencing homelessness and 10 community volunteers) worked on vision, values, goal setting, boundaries, and relationship skills.
Some meeting time was also set aside for bonding activities like painting and yoga. “We really wanted to make sure that the program felt like an invitation to develop real relationships, so participants were able to contact one another outside of those weekly check-ins and keep each other accountable for goals,” Young says.
And that’s exactly what happened, Young explains. Participants set up times to meet outside of scheduled meetings for fun activities. When they needed help with car troubles or getting to medical appointments, they were able to rely on the other women in their group.
Through post-program surveys, Young and her team found indications among participants of increased motivation and confidence in their ability to exit homelessness. “It’s always difficult to establish correlation versus causation, but participants shared with us that they felt like the program helped them.” She adds that three of the women who participated in the program have since found housing, while others have been able to work more consistently.
Young says that the program was enthusiastically received both by those who were experiencing homelessness and people who wanted to volunteer. “By the end of the program, there was such an overwhelming response from our participants that this needs to continue,” Young says.
Kelli Rusnak, a BYU biology student from Carmel, Indiana, says that participating with the Community Compassion Collective changed how she views homelessness and the people who experience it. “Though we have some different experiences and life stories, there seems to be a lot more that brings us together.” Rusnak also says since her participation, she makes an effort to acknowledge and listen to those she meets who are experiencing homelessness.
“Just to wake up in the morning and know that someone cares that you exist is huge and not something everyone has,” Young says. “It was really meaningful to see the personal transformation of the participants and how having someone on their side empowered them to take advantage of the resources and opportunities they had.”