By Robb Murray
MANKATO — One took it as a chance to tell the world that overcoming the factors that lead to homelessness isn’t as easy as people make it sound — it’s not just as simple as getting off your butt and finding a job.
Another took a chance to announce to the world the part of homelessness she hates the most: picking up everything and relocating. Often.
And another took the project as a chance to show that she refuses to let homelessness get her down. When this child did the project — where homeless children create a small “window” that, when viewed, reveals a glimpse into that child’s homeless life — she focused on hope.
Her design is covered with brightly colored squiggly lines, stars and the words “Sky is the limit.”
“She doesn’t feel held back,” said Rachel Anderson Droogsma, an instructor at Minnesota State University. “She feel she can do anything with her life.”
The window pane projects were done by children who live at the Theresa House Shelter. Droogsma, who teaches a class called Gender Communication, worked with shelter staff on coming up with a project that would let the children express themselves about being homeless.
At the same time, the MSU students in Droogsma’s class got a chance to learn about a segment of the population few get to mingle with.
Droogsma, who is teaching this particular class for the third time, always includes some kind of service learning component. The first two times, students worked with victims of domestic violence and did what is known as the “Clothesline Project,” where victims express themselves through writings on T-shirts, which are then strung along on a clothesline and displayed publicly.
The windows created by the children — who were helped by students from Droogsma’s class — will be hung from the ceiling April 16 in MSU’s Centennial Student Union.
Droogsma said she informed students early that it wasn’t going to be a typical class.
“I told them this is going to be an activist class,” Droogsma said, “that we’re going to take what we learn and try to make that situation better.”
That approach sits well with most students. And even the ones who aren’t sure usually come around by the time they begin meeting with, for example, victims of domestic violence, or in this case, homeless children.
Grant Anderson, one of Droogsma’s students, said the class has helped him understand his own values.
“If, after hearing it all, you still believe in them, then they are made stronger,” Anderson said. “This class challenges us, and patches holes in our logic.”
Anna Larson, volunteer coordinator for Theresa House, worked with Droogsma and the children. She also worked with the one adult who came a different time when the same project was offered to adults who live at the shelter.
She said that the kids who agreed to do it were unsure at first.
“I don’t think they knew what they were getting into,” Larson said. Once they started doing it and realizing what it meant, “they became engaged ... Afterward, it began to sink in that not only would it have an impact on them, but also on the people seeing it.”
Window to their world
The windows are interesting peeks into the children’s lives. One window shows merely a simple statement: “I wish I didn’t have to move so much.” One shows a humble house under the phrase, “It does not come that easy to everyone.” Another, clearly created by a young girl, shows a face that appears to be smiling surrounded by the joyful chaos only a child can create — “What it shows is that there’s a little girl there.”
Larson compared the window project to the AIDS Quilt that has traveled the world. Patch by patch it tells the stories of victims of AIDS. Panels include actual clothing from the victim, or a pair of shoes. Viewing it often elicits an emotional response. She hopes the same thing happens with the windows.
One example that stuck with her is the window made by a young man who produced a brightly colored window with a red, “abstract” house. When a volunteer prompted him to say more about it, the boy deliberately messed it up. When asked what it meant, he said, “Theresa House isn’t my home.”
“I thought that was terrific,” Larson said. “We could have been offended but ... It’s not easy living in a shelter.”
The next day, that boy participated in a writing project in which they were asked to explain a little more about their windows. The boy wrote “Theresa House is my house, not my home.” That sentence was followed by several lines of acknowledgment that the shelter is, in fact, the place that gives him a bed to sleep on and food to eat. His writing ends with the line, “Theresa House is my home.”
“He actually, through this process, came along to a positive message he might not have had he not done this project,” Larson said.
Some of the kids, Droogsma said, were very concerned about working with the students, and whether their names would be associated with it. The stigma associated with homelessness is clear.
“It’s easy to look down upon someone’s family,” Anderson said. “Our culture is so engrained with how negative it is, and people want to distance themselves from it ... It’s dehumanizing.”
