This Class Is Opening My Eyes to Important Social Issues that I Would Otherwise Be Blind To
During the past week, the students in NPI have had the opportunity to further connect with our local business owners and learn more about the poverty that exists in the Silicon Valley.
After meeting with Henry, the business owner that my team is working with, my team has began to research various business practices that are specific to his current needs. For example, one major inconvenience for Green Bay Hauling’s current operations is its lack of accepting payments through debit and credit cards; Henry can only accept cash and check payments. As such, my team has researched the process of accepting credit payments and has found cheap and useful technologies such as mobile credit card readers and wireless credit card terminals. Furthermore, we are beginning to create an excel spreadsheet for Henry to efficiently track his expenses and his revenues. This will allow him to make more accurate projections for his business and valuable investments as well. Up to this point in our business consultation with Henry, he has fostered a great working relationship with my team and I look forward to helping him further in the future.
During class on Wednesday, the 23rd, Professor Schmidt-Posner had two authors from “De-Bug” visit our classroom and talk about their personal experiences of living in poverty in the Silicon Valley. While in class, they shared intimate details about their lives and also their refreshingly genuine opinions on public policy and how it should be implemented. One of them, a middle-aged African American man, walked us through his life story of how he became homeless and the struggles he went through to finally maintain a permanent residence. He told us that the most common misconception of homeless people is that they are all drug addicts or lazy, but, in fact, many become homeless to flee domestic abuse, or as a result of their families disowning them due to uncommon lifestyle choices or sexualities. Growing up in Palo Alto, the heart of the Silicon Valley, this story exposed me to an alternate narrative that I hadn’t been exposed to before. Up to this point in my life I have exclusively experienced the stereotypical Silicon Valley lifestyle and, like most, hadn’t noticed the poverty-stricken population that has lived alongside me. Although it will take further action from citizens of the Silicon Valley to promote change in the impoverished communities in the Silicon Valley, this increase in awareness is a great first step for the community to take action.
Exposures, such as the discussion of last Wednesday’s class, are what make my participation in NPI so valuable; this class is opening my eyes to important social issues that I would otherwise be blind to and is inspiring me to create change in my community.