Most People Ignored This Homeless Man...

[cascadiance]

10. And we shouldn't forget that there are those like Dennis Kucinich who was at one time homeless...

... who if given the chance to succeed, will do so and when doing so will be better people for it later in life and help many more in a better way too.



And speaking on the issue of homelessness, we still have way too many homeless people here in Portland that need to be helped to free them from that trap.

As a former resident of Turkey, I recently came across articles on two different topics that have given me an idea on this...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/turkish-stray-dog-feeding-machine-a-model-for-social-design-a-986392.html

Social Design Made In Turkey: Feeding Istanbul's Stray Dogs, a Bottle at a Time



There's a vending machine in central Istanbul that takes recyclable cans and bottles and in exchange dispenses free food to some of the estimated 150,000 stray dogs living in the city. It may sound a bit out there, but it is precisely the kind of idea being sought as part of Germany's Orange Social Design Award, a new prize created by DER SPIEGEL's monthly cultural supplement, KulturSPIEGEL, and SPIEGEL ONLINE. The following is an interview with Engin Girgin, the inventor of the "dog food recycling box."

KulturSPIEGEL: Working together with the company Pugedon, you invented something totally new. Can you please explain the concept behind the dispenser?
Girgin: The box itself has three openings: One at the front, more or less at eye-level, a second one for liquids below that and a third one on the right-hand side of the box near the ground. The first opening is for depositing plastic bottles or cans. A sensor recognizes whether they are recyclable or not. If they are, then a certain amount of dog food falls into a bowl in the opening on the lower right-hand side. If there is some water remaining in the bottle and the person doesn't want it anymore, it can be poured into the second opening and the liquid flows into a bowl located right next to the food.

KulturSPIEGEL: So one could describe the box as a classic dog food dispenser?
Girgin: Yes, one could say that. There is an incredibly large number of stray animals, especially dogs, in Turkey. An estimated 150,000 stray dogs live in the city of Istanbul alone. They don't have an owner, but they need to be fed or they won't survive.
...

As a person who's lived in Turkey, this touches on and helps with an issue that is especially a problem in Turkey, since there cats are far more in favor as being pets than dogs are there. Traditionally their culture regards dogs as more "unclean" culturally and less apt to be domesticated, and cats are revered more especially since there's a belief amongst many that the revered leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk would be reborn as a cat at some point.

I saw recently on France 24 this story about how Istanbul, though perhaps having a lot of stray dogs traditionally, hasn't had to this point a big problem with homeless people there. But now they have a large growing population of Syrian homeless refugees there.

http://www.france24.com/en/focus/20140725-syrian-refugees-turkey-istanbul-anger-wave-immigration-poverty/

I'd like to open a dialogue to those that invented that food dispenser there to help perhaps provide newer devices that might seek to help automate the process a bit more to help the homeless and not just the stray dogs, that could help both his country deal with a growing homeless situation and many of our own cities, including Portland here where I live. I think Portland being a "partner city" to building up a newer strategy to help feed the homeless in a targeted and hopefully effective way would be not only a good way to bring the west together with the middle east area, but provide a strategy to deal with this growing global problem as the rich get richer and the rest of us get closer to this state of helplessness. I think we've all felt being close to being broke recently. I know I have. But we need to provide a floor that people can't fall through, especially since welfare that used to provide that has been cut back.

I think if you could provide either emergency food ration kits or chits for things like food from food carts that we have many of here in Portland, or something along those lines so that even at hours when no one is wandering the streets, a homeless person can get perhaps some kind of food or other survival needs in an automated fashion would hopefully help them a lot, and perhaps eliminate the concern that some who might give but who don't that the money they give would be just used to "buy a bottle of booze".