JOM MAKAN!
STREET FEEDING 2016
Jom Makan! Street feeding event was a successful one despite some minor problem. It’s my first time joining this kind of street feeding event and it’s such a new and fresh experience.
We gathered at Central Market and waited for quite a while for the food to arrive. In the mean time, we interact with our juniors and family tree members, which we’ll never had the chance to even speak with if it’s not because of this event. It’s a really good opportunity to exchange mindful conversations and all.
When we started walking along the assigned route, which is SEGI KL route for my group, I noticed that there is actually quite a lot of homeless people around the area. I’d never notice this much homeless people around KL before, It’s a whole new perspective for me. All these while I really thought that KL is a city with no homeless people, at least not this much. It really frightened me that such phenomena happen right in the heart of Malaysia, creeping under our nose without us noticing unless you join events like this. Hopefully people don’t despise these poor homeless. Heard from the other facilitator that actually the main reason that this problem is this serious because Malaysia government is too busy focusing on development in infrastructure but not socially.
When my group member started to distribute the food, water and clothes, they actually receive them quite politely because in my imagination it’s not like that. It’s a war going on if it’s of my imagination. The look on their face when they received the food…although some are quite greedy in my point of view. But maybe it’s the little things that we can’t understand because they appreciate the things that we took for granted, they cherish them much more than us. My job of this event is to take photos of the activity, it makes me wonder a lot because I’m the one who actually see more than other group members. I see the homeless’ facial expressions, their gratitude and even the expressions of our own group member. I see it all, through my lens even to the point that I forgot to press that shutter, it’s satisfying doing good for the needy. It makes me think that we as architecture student have to really care about the community when designing for the people, even the teeny tiny stuff that we took for granted in our daily life.
The homeless lingering around public spaces
Jom Makan! crew on the go.
Giving food and water even though the homeless is sleeping, hopefully he can wake up with a smile on his face :D
Helping hands...truly warms my heart.
When Ms. Chia wrapped up the street feeding session, she mentioned about architects have to consider about the homeless when designing a public space. Maybe integrate some area for the homeless to reside when designing a walkway or a corridor for a public space.
One British architectural technician, James Furzer has come out with a “parasitic sleeping pods” to provide a safe place for homeless people to sleep. His design features an accessible ladder to a lightweight, modular sleeping pod that attaches against buildings and hovers above street level. In my opinion, it is really a good design to “sweep” the homeless people off the street to protect the homeless’ safety and most importantly keeping the streets and public spaces “clean from eye sores”. This is because with homeless people sleeping and lingering all over the streets, it actually creates a very bad impact for tourist even for locals. Even me myself will feel kinda scare passing by a whole bunch of homeless people staring at you. So I think it is real important to group the homeless, apart from keeping the safety of homeless.
"The concept never once states that this will cure the homeless issue, and prevent homelessness altogether. I would like to think this could be one step forward in helping the homeless. Not curing it."
– JAMES FURZER
There's many people saying the homeless wouldn't appreciate James's design because it is said to be a short sighted response which has added to the stigma of homelessness and failed to address the root causes. Therefore the quote above. Go James!!!
It is a truly great experience and I’m grateful that I have the chance to join this kind of activity, apart from worrying about our finals, we really had a great time gaining new insights and experiences. I think we have to cherish all that we have and as an architecture students, always put community at first. Hopefully I can engage myself in more community projects and activity in the future, whether as an architect or not.
:D