Throughout the Brownwood community, a variety of local businesses and chains have donated items to a silent auction and forum. The event has been creatively crafted and designed in a dual partnership of HPU students and Brown County Home Solutions.
The Silent Auction and Forum, open to the entire community, will be held Thursday, April 21 at Doakie Day Art Center at Howard Payne University.
Brown County Home Solutions seeks to get families and individuals out of homelessness and provide sustainable solutions. Additionally, their work includes providing housing and educating the community on homelessness, as stated on their website.
The four HPU students are Mackenzie Langham, senior, Benjamin Sartain, junior, Jordan Favors, senior and Mia Romero, junior. They have spent their entire class, Strategic Communication Campaigns, undergoing the process of choosing an organization in Brownwood and campaign a successful event.
“Our project was to choose an organization and to run a campaign and help support them. So, we looked at what sort of organizations we wanted to help, and Brown Country Home Solutions really stood out to us,” said Sartain.
The group of students simply did not seek to raise donations. Instead, they came to the conclusion for an event that will involve the Brownwood community. A major aspect is the contribution of local businesses and donations for the silent auction.
“We’ve asked businesses and local businesses if they would be willing to donate [something] for that silent auction to help raise those funds. All the items have been completely donated,” explained Sartain. “However much we auction those off for, 100% of that will go to Brown County Home Solutions,” said Sartain.
Their main piece of the event is the forum to explain the homeless situation in Brown County. Here, the group seeks to inspire more involvement and raise awareness about homelessness through experienced speakers on the issue.
“We will have two guest speakers, as well as Jillian Goss, one of the co-directors at BCHS. She will be opening it. Then we will have two speakers, one who has gone through the transitional housing at BCHS and then one who has been in the shelter,” said Langham.
While collaborating with BCHS, the student group has been campaigning rapidly, getting the word out to the Brownwood community. The group has met consistently and has prioritized community involvement in the campaign, outreach through local businesses, and social media.
“Most of the people we have talked with have been pretty interested and excited. We’ve had some people respond on our social media posts; we were on the radio yesterday sharing about the event,” Sartain said.
“For community,” Langham added, “we have put stuff on Facebook, on Brown County Home Solutions Facebook page, which reaches thousands of people. So, we’re hoping to gather a lot of people from that.”
The HPU students and BCHS hope the event will start to educate and unfold prejudices and stereotypes people can have with the homeless. Part of their social media campaign provides a survey to see how many of their attendees know little about homelessness.
“We see people on the side of the road, and we come to our own conclusions. But then when you actually hear their story and your reminded, almost we can view people as less than, when they don’t have a home,” Langham stated.
When the event concludes, the students want to capture audience opinion again. They want to see if their attendees have learned more about homelessness from the forum. If so, and with the goal of $500 raised, the students will call it a successful night.
Most of the proceeds will go towards a lock in pantry that BCHS needs to secure food donated. Overall, the student group and BCHS hopes this event will impact the community to raise volunteers. Additionally, to understand the homelessness situation in our community.
[Story by Jake Lehrer]