SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – Father Joe’s Villages and six students from UC San Diego are teaming up to help those who are living on our streets get better connected to resources.
"I'd actually volunteered for Father Joe's villages in the past,” Tessa Chan, one of the students, said."So, when I saw the name, I got pretty excited and wanted to work with them further."
Chan, a junior at UC San Diego, isn't volunteering at Father Joe's Villages, but rather working with the non-profit through the university’s Innovating for X program (i4X).
"So, what we're aiming to fix is communication breakdown between people who are unsheltered on the streets and their outreach workers or their street health staff that provide medical care,” Josh Bohannan, Chief Strategy Officer for Father Joe's Villages, said.
Bohannan told ABC 10News the non-profit teamed with UC San Diego to work with students to create an online portal to help with better and continued connection to case workers, medical needs, and other resources.
"One of the biggest challenges we have is people have cell phones, but they lose their number because their phone breaks, it's stolen, it might be taken in an encampment sweep,” Bohannan said. “So, that connection and that relationship that they've built with their provider, there's a breakdown,” said.
The portal allows for continued communication for anyone looking for services with Father Joe's.
"Each person will have their own unique code, and sign up with the outreach worker, and so each will have their own unique ID where they can log in from any device that has access to the internet,” Bohannan said. "What this platform has is not just texting and communication with your outreach workers, but it also would allow for a GPS drop."
Bohannan said that can be anywhere from the library to a new phone or someone else’s. He told ABC 10News the portal is in the beta stages and the kinks will be worked out by the UC San Diego team over the summer.
So, they hope to have the portal online soon and help those in need.
"So I think that having a consolidated resource would really kind of serve to benefit a lot of people,” Chan said.
