I met the dynamic Beck Kanis, a key leader of the Common Ground Movement, in SF at the recent Health Care for the Homeless Conference and since then she and I have been working on planning for her to come to Santa Barbara to introduce Common Ground, vulnerability mapping and the 100,000 Homes Campaign to our community. This early planning has included Ralph Barbosa, leader of our local Health Care for the Homeless Program, Jeff Schaffer of the Uffizi Mission Project and the good folks from the Organic Soup Kitchen.
It is critical to involve all of the grass-roots homeless advocacy/activist groups in the Common Ground approach because the vulnerability mapping is done in large part by volunteers who receive training from Common Ground. Becky and I have also been in touch with Ken Kraybill MSW, the nationally renowned HCH leader and instructor in motivational interviewing, about coming to Santa Barbara also to help us with the volunteer training. We are so lucky that Ken Kraybill is considering coming to our community to teach us! Becky and I will be speaking this coming week about setting a date for her and Ken Kraybill to come to town sometime this Fall to have a meeting to launch Common Ground here. I will widely announce the date of this event ASAP so that all interested groups can attend. My street medicine mentor, Jim Withers MD of the International Street Medicine Institute, has told me that he thinks the work of Common Ground is among the most effective and inspirational grassroots homeless advocacy work going on in the US now. Lets put our beautiful city on the Common Ground map! Mimi Doohan MD Doctors Without Walls, founder and medical director (volunteer).
posted August 1, 2010
