Negative Blogs

When it comes to the important issues of the day, it’s usually easier to relate to one person’s dramatic story than to overwhelming statistics.

FAITH & REASON: Ted Williams, once homeless, uses golden voice to thank God

That was the case recently with golden-voiced Ted Williams, the Columbus man who was living on the streets until a newspaper reporter helped turn him into an overnight sensation.

It’s also the idea behind Dayton-area pastor Ryan Riddell’s January journey.

The clergyman is hoping to bring awareness to the issue of homelessness this month by sleeping and living in his van on the streets of Dayton instead of in his comfortable Miamisburg home. He seeks shelter from bitter January days at the downtown library or bus hub.

According to Joyce Probst MacAlpine, Montgomery County’s manager of housing and homeless solutions, there are about 4,000 homeless in the Dayton area and there was an 11% increase in people at local shelters in 2010.

It’s the medium that makes Riddell’s experiences unique; he’s using social media to bring home his message in creative new ways. He’s constantly updating his website, tweeting and posting on Facebook to let followers know when someone he’s encountered on the streets needs a pair of long johns, overnight housing or a pair of shoes.

Riddell, bundled up and unshaven, shares his daily reflections through both video and written blogs, appearing on television and radio to tell his story and to grow his audience. He’s been featured in media outlets ranging from the Huffington Post to ABC.com and was one of Friday’s Intriguing People on CNN’s “This Just In.”

He’s racked up 1,000 friends on Facebook and has had 30,000 hits on his web page.

A minister at Shelter Community Church of the Nazarene in Belmont as well as a realtor for Keller Williams, Riddell, 45, also owns a roofing business in Miamisburg.

“I have four reasons for doing this,” he explains. “The first is for my own spiritual renewal. I’m trying to take 30 days to step back from the things I do in the business world and the church.”

A second reason, he says, is that “Jesus became like us in order to reach us.” Riddell says the more he gets into the world of the homeless, the more receptive people have been, allowing him to be of help.

That help may range from passing out drinks and snacks to locating overnight shelter for someone who has been sleeping in a tent and on the street for months. A growing number of followers, including area church members, are helping him by filling needs as they arise.

For example, earlier this week, Riddell was attending a service and meal at Target: Dayton Ministries when an 18-year-old girl named Samantha asked if he could get her a Bible. Within 45 seconds after he’d posted the request on Facebook, someone had offered to drop off the book at St. Vincent’s that night. The same thing happened when Riddell requested a pair of new shoes for a young person who had been wearing the same pair for the past three years.

Riddell says he also hopes to create an awareness of what’s happening downtown, just minutes from where many members of his congregation reside.

“We all hang out at the Oregon District, we socialize, eat, find entertainment, but on the other side of the trestle there’s a semi-tractor trailer and people are sleeping under that on skids with cardboard for insulation,” he says. “I typically drive through there with my windows up and have no awareness of the stuff going on there. I’m trying to live and walk these streets to create an awareness.”

Riddell says we all expect our community organizations to “take care of these things.”

“I believe that biblically we have a responsibility to cry out and help these people,” he says, adding that many people are quick to insist that the homeless get a job and help themselves.

“These folks are so beaten down and so consumed with basic needs such as food and shelter, it’s hard to get out of that hole,” he explains.

He is particularly concerned about the kids who “age out” of the foster care system and end up living on the streets. He’s working with Salem Church of God in Englewood to help create a new nonprofit organization, New Family Tree, that will provide transitional housing for young people who may have no place to go after age 18.

Riddell insists he isn’t “pretending” to be homeless. He set up rules for himself from the get-go: He’s sleeping in a van rather than taking up a bed at a shelter, eating alongside the homeless at local food missions by invitation. He’s seeing his wife and children and showering twice a week; he carries and uses a credit card when he feels it can help someone.

At first, Riddell says, he was intimidated when hanging out at places like the downtown bus hub. One day, a lady to whom he’d recently sold a house didn’t recognize him.

“I had no idea how engaged I would become,” he says. “It’s gripping me more than I had expected. These weeks on the street have helped me better understand those who are homeless.”

“These people have a story,” he says. “They have a name and a soul. They want their story told, they want to be heard. They appreciate my being their voice.”

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Online:

http://30dayshomeless.wordpress.com/

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Article extracted from usatoday.com

Shane Richmond and Will Heaven answer the question facing Mark
Zuckerberg at the beginning of 2011.

By Shane Richmond and Will Heaven
11:41PM GMT 04 Jan 2011

Comments

Yes – 500 million members suggest it’s well on the way, says Shane Richmond.

Whichever way you look at it, 2010 was a spectacular year for Facebook. In
America, it overtook Google to become the most visited website; globally,
it’s the third‑largest website, behind Microsoft and Google. Its founder and
chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

Over the new year weekend, Facebook users uploaded 750 million photos. That’s
more than one picture for each user of the site, which now has a membership
of well over 500 million people. And this week it was announced that Goldman
Sachs will invest $450 million (£288 million) in Facebook, taking the
valuation of the site to $50 billion (£32 billion).

Then consider the fact that Facebook is still growing – at the rate of 700,000
people a day. It’s closing in on 600 million users, and as more join, the
network becomes more powerful. Its members aren’t just chatting and sharing
photos, they are also playing games, reading the news and keeping up with
famous people. Facebook Places lets them share their location with friends;
Facebook Messages aims to replace our email accounts; and the Facebook
experience is now available on more than two million websites.

At the heart of this is Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old Harvard drop-out who
has become the world’s youngest billionaire. According to those around him,
he’s not motivated by money, which is why he has resisted pressure to sell
Facebook. He lives a relatively modest life, by all accounts. His motivation
seems to be to drive Facebook forwards – and his success at doing that has
been staggering. Profiling him last month, Time magazine noted that in
addition to his expertise as a computer programmer, Zuckerberg “understands
a remarkable amount about other people”. His mother was a psychiatrist and
he studied some psychology at Harvard. There is a team of very smart people
around him. The site competes aggressively with its Silicon Valley
competitors to snap up the best talent. But even with the social networking
“think tank” that Facebook has established at its headquarters in Palo Alto,
California, it’s Zuckerberg who remains the leader.

Related Articles

Article extracted from telegraph.co.uk

The state of Virginia has backed away from its attempts to force Facebook to divulge the complete contents of a user’s account to settle a dispute over workers’ compensation, narrowly avoiding what promised to be a high-profile privacy battle in federal court.

On Monday, the Virginia’s Workers Compensation Commission said it was no longer going to levy a $200-a-day fine on the social-networking site for refusing to comply with a subpoena from an airline that previously employed a flight attendant named Shana Hensley.

Facebook had objected to the June 4 subpoena from Colgan Air–the Manassas, Va.-based company that operates under the names United Express, US Airways Express, and Continental Connection–on privacy grounds. It said federal law prohibits divulging user data in response to a subpoena, and promised to “further litigate this issue by seeking, among other things, an injunction from the federal courts.”

In principle, this isn’t a novel concept: employers and insurance companies have long used private investigators to ferret out fraud and show that someone who claims to be a virtual cripple actually participates in waterskiing competitions.

Because social-networking sites offer such information-rich glimpses into a person’s private life, insurers and employers have begun eyeing them. A personal injury lawyer in Elmira, N.Y., noted in July that an accident victim claiming to be severely injured was, thanks to Facebook, revealed to be playing in soccer games. An article last week in Business Insurance said that social-networking sites revealed exaggerated claims of injuries from a judo instructor, a bowler, and a rodeo bronco rider.

In the Colgan Air case, Facebook says it’s happy that privacy rights prevailed. “We’re pleased with the outcome and that our users’ information will be protected,” said Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt.

Colgan Air, which is owned by the publicly traded Pinnacle Airlines, initially paid Hensley’s disability benefits that were related to a back injury while on the job (she was diagnosed with a herniated disc that did not want surgery). After about 18 months, however, Colgan Air claimed that Hensley was not cooperating with its efforts to find her a desk job and appears to have concluded that Hensley’s holiday vacation photos posted on her Facebook account would demonstrate that any back problems were not severe.

Popular social networking site Facebook is breaching Canadian law by holding on to users’ personal information indefinitely, a report has concluded.

An investigation by Canada’s privacy commission found the US-based website also gave “confusing or incomplete” information to subscribers.

Facebook says it is aiming to safeguard users’ privacy without compromising their experience of the site.

More than 200 million people actively use Facebook.

They include about 12 million in Canada, more than one in three of the population.

Facebook is yet to make a profit despite being the world’s biggest social network.

The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones speaks to the Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, about revenue, privacy, and the future. National Hard Money Association Conference