美国国家公共电台 NPR Harnessing Social Media To Reconnect Homeless People With Their Families

Harnessing Social Media To Reconnect Homeless People With Their Families

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0005:08repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser¹ to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: 

A week before Christmas in 2014, Kevin Adler decided² to take a walk down Market Street in San Francisco. Adler carried with him three things - hot tea, biscuits and an offer, an offer to every homeless person he met to record a video message for a long-lost relative or friend. Kevin Adler promised he would try to deliver the messages in time for the holidays. Out of that was born a mission, a startup called Miracle Messages, which has now helped dozens of homeless people reunite with their families. We invited Adler and one of those people he's helped to come tell us about it. Adler says one of the first hurdles³ is persuading people to make a video.

KEVIN ADLER: A lot of folks that have recorded messages, one of the hesitancies in recording⁴ a message is they've said, well, I don't know how the family's going to respond. I feel like a burden. I feel ashamed. I'm embarrassed. And so trying to get past that, doing something very simple with a - what we call a video postcard, is a very helpful first step for basically saying who you love, who you want to reconnect with, whatever kind of message you want to leave. And we'll do our best to deliver it.

KELLY: Now let me introduce you to Dave Adams. Adams lived on the streets in San Francisco for 20 years. He says he lost touch with his family, couldn't figure out how to make contact.

DAVE ADAMS: Well, personally, I gave up a while back, just decided I wasn't going to put a whole lot of effort into it anymore. I ain't computer smart. Pretty dumb - pretty much dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to computers. So I didn't have - knew I didn't have no way I could do it. So I just gave up.

KELLY: Until a volunteer at Miracle Messages helped Adams find his brothers. And he learned he had a half sister named Dorothy who'd been looking for him for years. So he called her.

ADAMS: She don't usually answer phones that she don't know the number to on a cell phone. She said, OK, I'll answer the phone. And then she answers the phone. And I says, is this Dorothy? She says yes. I hear you're looking - you've been looking for me. You want to talk to me about something? And it's like - she says, oh my god. Oh, god. Oh, god. It ain't. It ain't. It ain't. She said, who are you? I told her. She says - then she couldn't say nothing. She just started crying. She was just, you know - she says yeah, she got a little upset - emotional somewhat, you know? I guess about 30-something years she's been looking. She promised her dad, our dad, that no matter what, she'll just keep going until she found me.

KELLY: When we got Adams together on the line with founder⁵ Kevin Adler, we asked about that moment and what Adler hopes might follow from it.

Is there, aside from the reunions themselves, a broader goal of helping⁶ people move on with their lives, move off the streets?

ADLER: So my uncle Mark had been homeless for about 30 years. He suffered from schizophrenia, lived on and off the streets. I never saw him as a homeless man. You know, he's my beloved uncle. And so...

ADAMS: ...I ain't homeless, dude. I'm houseless.

ADLER: (Laughter) Exactly, houseless. And so when we walk down the street and we see someone who is without a house, it's easy to define them by that. And we want to live in a world where we walk down the street and we don't see Homeless Joe or Jane, Houseless Joe or Jane - sorry, Dave - but we see someone...

ADAMS: ...Now, there's some homelessness - homelessness is a state of mind.

KELLY: Dave, you jumped in there, in case not everybody listening could hear. And you were, it sounded like, objecting to the term homeless. Did you think of yourself that way these last 20 years?

ADAMS: No, I said homelessness and houselessness is different. Houseless is like how I think about it. Where you lay your head at night and lay down to go to sleep. Whether it's in a mansion⁷ or in a car or a school bus or a doorway⁸, one thing about it is that's home.

KELLY: And it sounds like, Dave, you are headed to a new house, a new home with your sister at her farm in Tennessee. Is that right?

ADAMS: For now.

KELLY: For now?

ADAMS: That's - she's going to pick me up at the bus stop, the bus station.

KELLY: When Dave Adams gets to that bus stop in Tennessee, he already will have a job working on a farm. Adams' family was glad to hear from him. Kevin Adler says that's not always the case.

ADLER: In our experience so far, about 90 percent of the messages that we've delivered are positively⁹ received. But that still means that about 1 out of every 10 occasions the family or the friends are not interested in reconnecting. Fortunately, in many of those instances, we've had other individuals who maybe weren't mentioned in the initial video that do reach out and say, hey, I'd like to reconnect.

KELLY: So, Adler says, the work of what he calls a global network of volunteer detectives continues.

ADLER: We want to reunite 1 million people by 2021. That's 1 percent of the world's homeless population - houseless population. So yeah, if we're really going to move the needle in ending homelessness and using social media for social good, we figure we need to set the goal at least at a million and then hopefully exceed it.

KELLY: Talking there with Kevin Adler, founder of Miracle Messages, and Dave Adams, one of the people he's helped reunite with his family after 20 years houseless in San Francisco.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

3 hurdles   

n.障碍( hurdle的名词复数 )；跳栏；（供人或马跳跃的）栏架；跨栏赛

参考例句：

• In starting a new company, many hurdles must be crossed. 刚开办一个公司时，必须克服许多障碍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• There are several hurdles to be got over in this project. 在这项工程中有一些困难要克服。 来自辞典例句

4 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

5 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

6 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

7 mansion   

n.大厦，大楼；宅第

参考例句：

• The old mansion was built in 1850.这座古宅建于1850年。
• The mansion has extensive grounds.这大厦四周的庭园广阔。

8 doorway   

n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径

参考例句：

• They huddled in the shop doorway to shelter from the rain.他们挤在商店门口躲雨。
• Mary suddenly appeared in the doorway.玛丽突然出现在门口。

9 positively   

adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实

参考例句：

• She was positively glowing with happiness.她满脸幸福。
• The weather was positively poisonous.这天气着实讨厌。