I'm Approved!

Tonight was a night of good/need to share things:
1. My project has been approved by the residents of TC3 and I'm invited to come in and interview interested women! This is the biggest hurdle I was worried about regarding project implementation so it's great news.

I was actually over there tonight for the host-church 'Welcome TC3 Ice cream Social." I took a mini tour of the community and got to speak to a handful of women. Maybe they were being polite but they seemed really interested in speaking to me. Several made note of the fact that shelter and food are regularly spoken about and addressed but that healthcare (and women's healthcare, in particular) is frequently given secondary consideration, if any at all.

2. I also had an opportunity to speak to several male residents. One man explained which Seattle neighborhoods were most welcoming of the tent city (Capital Hill ranks highly, apparently). He shared that in some neighborhoods, permanent residents will see someone from the Tent City with a backpack and immediately assume they're homeless. His language was quite deliberate and it presented an eye-opening realization. He doesn't see himself as homeless- the tent city is his home. He views himself and his peers differently from the homeless folks he sees downtown every day.

This notion proved even more salient when, during the tour, one non-tent city woman yelled out, emphasizing her support for their system, "You can tell the city that you'll stop living in tents when they give you homes." The tour guide- a longtime tent city resident- paused for a long while before responding. I don't know if he felt like TC3 is his home and that her suggesting otherwise was a possible affront, but the language was surely interesting.