Clara Welch

I spent a full year volunteering 10 hours a week with homeless and low-income populations at the University Hospital and Fourth Street Clinic. The concerns, realities, and needs of these people became very real to me. Trying to figure out a story for this project was hard and I went through a few ideas for it. This idea wasn’t even one of the two stories I pitched earlier in the semester. The idea came from another student. When she was talking about her idea to look at Operation Rio Grande, it hit me that I have a lot of personal experiences and feelings towards the things going on.

Figuring out that this is what I wanted to write about was easy, but it was hard to know what direction I wanted to go. My research began with learning more about Operation Rio Grande. Utah actually has done some things in the past that have brought national recognition when it comes to helping homeless. One of those thing is “housing first”, which I talk about in the article. Then I needed to get my interviews done, but was still unsure the direction.

My interviews were all exactly what I needed. The questions asked were general questions, but the conversations went to places that formed my story for me. It reminded me of the things that I had learned when I volunteered with these people that I came to really know.

Sitting down to write Curing homelessness with a focus on the individual, the ideas came once I had everything that I needed. It’s a cause that means a lot to me and ideas that I believe are most important in everything that you do.