By Charlotte Murphy, IU Corps
On April 10, 2024, Habitat for Humanity at Indiana University hosted a speaker panel, Breaking Barriers in Bloomington: A Solution to Shelter. The panel featured four speakers from various nonprofit organizations in the local Bloomington community. During this event, students were able to learn more about the diverse spectrum of housing challenges and explore how nonprofits are uniquely positioned to address those challenges. Specifically, the topics discussed were refugee resettlement, homelessness, emergency shelter, and house ownership.
The four panel speakers were Development Director of Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, Lindsey Boswell, Development Director for Middle Way House, Maria Douglas, Executive Director of Beacon Inc., Rev. Forrest Gilmore, and Resettlement Director for Exodus Refugee Immigration Sub-Office, Erin Aquino. Each speaker shared their experiences, expertise, and examples of making meaningful impact in Bloomington.
In a conversation with junior Eden Kee, president of Habitat for Humanity at Indiana University, she provided insight about the planning and thought process behind this event,
“For the Breaking Barriers in Bloomington event, we and a lot of people on campus know that as college students, we make Bloomington the most expensive county in the state of Indiana to live in. I’ve always been passionate and curious about the housing spectrum, because I grew up in Bloomington and saw a lot of different sides of it. My executive board and I, we wanted to be able to find ways to give back to the community and we felt like a lot of organizations on campus do a lot of fundraising-based giving back so we wanted to think of something that was a bit more equitable for people who may not have the funds to be able to give back in that way. We thought advocating and educating for the spectrum of housing is a great way to do that and how we could give back to the community.”
Throughout the event planning process, there were many logistics involved from questions, attendance, and food.
“We’ve been planning this for pretty much the whole semester. It started with our director of outreach, Cheyenne, and I. We had a meeting and brainstormed what we were interested in. We also had some meetings with professors, with Monroe County Habitat for Humanity executives, and overall different people that could give us more of an idea of what they would be interested in hearing. Once we decided, we reached out to speakers and prepared questions. Luckily, this year we haven’t had any problems with speakers not wanting to speak and the four that we reached out to immediately reached back out and said that they’d be happy to speak. That made the process a lot easier.”
In the end, event feedback from all four panel speakers and community leaders was positive, uplifting, and rewarding.
“I spoke to the panel before they left, they were incredibly happy to have been in attendance. Community members expressed their pride in the students who were in attendance, have a desire to give back to the community, and want to learn about what they can do which is rewarding,” Kee said.
Ready to join? Check out Habitat for Humanity at Indiana University on beINvolved and follow their social media accounts @habitatatiub for information about upcoming events and meetings. Habitat for Humanity at Indiana University will be hosting another panel next semester. There will also be a new GroupMe on the beINvolved webpage in the fall for students to join.
Leave a Reply