ORGANIZATION

Homelessness is not acceptable. Not in 2018, and not in one of the richest countries in the world; the UK. We can’t end it overnight. Nor can we do it on our own. But our project lays out our motivations, scale of ambition, and plan for how we will lead the change in a unique way as an agile, independent social enterprise making policy change happen, whilst creating the public interest to make the conditions for change more likely.

The need for reform in the way homelessness is dealt with in law is great, as the current system is just not working- that's according to the facts. We can do better, but larger organisations seem to be mainly occupied with provision of care, or pushing for change that might not be at the heart of the issue. Precision, the ability to collaborate, and the empowerment of an incredible team will allow us, Tomorrow Today, to lead and guide the change needed. 

Our social enterprise, Tomorrow Today, plans to launch with the sole purpose of delivering the “In Our Hands” project which we expect to take 5 years to deliver. When considering the total social and financial benefits, the value of complete project delivery to UK society is £40.3bn. The benefits of our goals once realised are detailed in our Business Plan document on our website, in the hope that it will be clear why you'd want to support the project and help us deliver the mission.

Our work breaks down into 4 main work streams: Relief Work, Public Engagement, Collaboration, and Policy Change.

Relief Work
Through our In Our Hands Project, we are using crowdfunding to provide rough sleepers with a relief for living costs, enlisting support to get them job ready, and helping them find employment. Our turnaround time for each client is 4 months from rough sleeper to full-time employment. This unique approach to offering a path out of poverty for people sleeping rough is scalable, and with enough successes, we hope to help people across the world use the same methods.

Public Engagement
Tomorrow Today engages the public with the issues we tackle. Our work on homelessness creates greater dialogue in person at the talks we hold, and on social media channels we use to. An informed and engaged crowd is absolutely essential to our Theory of Change: “A populace that is better informed about the PREVALENCE of an issue, it’s CAUSES, and how decision makers HANDLE IT, are much more likely to create an INFORMED OPINION of their own, and engage with SOLVING IT.”

A large portion of the “informing the public” work will revolve around the In Our Hands book. The engagement work (closely linked to informing really) will take shape both in person, and digitally using devices such as podcasts, videos, social media posts, and a blog. We intend to become the go-to resource for informed conversation on ending homelessness.

Collaboration
Tomorrow Today recognises the work of other legendary charities and organizations in the field of homelessness. Our intention is to bring about more collaboration in the homelessness relief scene, as we feel that we will have more impact collectively. As an innovative group, we hope to only be a force for good, but to genuinely advance the agenda for homeless people. We want to work alongside other organisations making real meaningful and positive change.

Policy Change
The morality of an era is reflected by it’s laws, as people often have no incentive (other than profits) to behave any better. With this in mind, we think the UK is better than what the law currently reflects of us. We have the capacity and the resources to engage with the problem of homelessness in a much better way. Tomorrow Today has clear vision on what ‘better’ looks like, and intends to engage with policy makers to ensure these perspectives are heard, considered, and hopefully adopted.

http://www.papabaiden.com/

 

PROJECT

We need an in-depth dashboard that helps people understand the homelessness issues. The data visualisations will be featured on the website, Facebook group, Twitter, and Instagram. 

 

COMMUNICATION GOAL

To bring about a strategic end to the conditions that create homelessness in the UK.

DATA

Housing table file name: LT_615
What it shows: Table 615 All long-term1234 vacant dwellings by local authority district, England, from 2004 to 2016
Key data: mainly in column S. main interest is totals for England (S8), London (S428), and can use fields E and F to find key comparison cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Brighton.

Rough sleeper count filename: Rough_Sleeping_Autumn_2016_Final_Tables
What it shows: Street counts and estimates of rough sleeping in England, Autumn1 2010 - 2016
Key data: rows 6 and 7. change over time

Qualitative report on rough sleeper count document: This sets out a description of the numbers in the file just above. It also contains the count from the group called CHAIN (combined homelessness and information network). This is the number we want to have compared to the national statistic.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE 

• Sign up as a volunteer
• Use the hashtag #VizForSocialGood on Twitter to submit your visualization(s) and a link (if applicable). 
• Mention @datachloe.

DEADLINE

February 15th, 2018 (11:59 pm PST).