Blog post 5

On Thursday, my partner Taylor and I got to interview the lawyer in charge of affairs at SZM. Taylor has an interest in going into non-profit law as a career path so this was interesting to see. As far as I gathered, Doug, the lawyer, primarily dealt with legal issues relating to real estate and construction. Originally SZM’s land belonged to the owner of the gas station next door and it was being rented to them. Then a few years ago, they bought that property and are now building a new section of the building onto it.


On the other hand, I did a recording for a child friendly version of the comic books the SZM had written. The subject matter of the comics were very intense and not necessarily appropriate for a young age group. And so, rather than try to rewrite a novel centered around drug addiction and alcoholism, PTSD, and abuse, SZM simply wrote a new graphic novel centered around kindness and helping others.


The storyline of the book was very simple; kindness had become scarce in the world and when one person chose to spread their own kindness it really did spread. It went on to highlight the good that came from just one person doing good deeds. 


This sort of helped me to realize something I hadn’t before which is that the heavy topics that many of us consider when thinking about the struggles of the homeless and of veterans really aren’t child friendly. So, how does someone whose primary goal is helping those people go about speaking to children? Either they simply don’t, which can have a negative in that the next generation doesn’t know about organizations such as this, or they make these topics child friendly. By skipping the dark and heavy parts of homelessness we can simplify it to a need for kindness and empathy to teach children about these things.

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