Angelina Tran English 1102-024 Ms.

Caruso April 9, 2013 MEMO "At Home Within" is the perfect title for the results that will come of this Noetic program for homeless people. I find this extremely interesting because it's like a community coming together to help the homeless percentage. Usually, many people just keep to themselves and make sure they can stay out of homelessness. Through my own experiences, I haven't seen that much effort into helping the homeless percentage and helping their mental security and stability. But with this IONS project, yoga, drumming, and meditation are offered to the homeless and this helps them find peace inside while they are going through tough times while being homeless. I want to go more in depth with this subject; understand the psychology behind it and understand how people were before and after this project.

IONS. At Home Within: A Noetic Program for Homeless Shelters and Social Service Agencies. IONS: Institute of Noetic Sciences, 17, September. 2009. <noetic.org/athomewithin/ overview/>.

436 Elmhurst Rd. Charlotte, NC 28209

March 26, 2013

Charlotte Area Command (Salvation Army) 4335 Stuart Andrew Blvd.Ste 120 Charlotte, NC 28217

To Those It May Concern at the Salvation Army:

"It's not easy. There's a lot of stress sometimes, there's a lot of drama..tensionyou know, a lot of us lost our homes, our possessions, our kids.." (IONS) RelocatedPoverty is on the move. It grows and it spreads like a virus; communities are plagued with it as businesses and factories shut down. With all the economic struggles and disappointments recently, (the rate of poverty rises)delete people are forced out of their homes and into homeless shelters. A man who has been homeless for a while now says, "It's not easy. There's a lot of stress sometimes, there's a lot of drama..tensionyou know, a lot of us lost our homes, our possessions, our kids.." (IONS) <-RELOCATED TO BEGINNING Becoming homeless is a major change to the life of a person, something that can put them into a state of mental instability, lack of motivation, just utter withdrawal because hope may be lost in their eyes. This could only lead to fuller shelters; all of

which, filled with those who are too unmotivated to move on with the lives they have. relocated to next paragraph To benefit everyone, I want to promote propose a project that I came across called "At Home Within." It is a project that brings the community together to offer services such as yoga, meditation, drumming, chi gong, as well as other stress relieving and integrating activities. Such get-togethers (deleted) gatherings were proven to improve the state of mind of a homeless person, bringing them closer to who they were inside, finding a whole new level of peace. With this new level of peace, homeless adults are more likely to go out of their way to improve their lives, therefore, hopefully, decreasing the homeless shelter population. In this letter, I hope to present my opinion as to why this project is essential to the homeless environment. With the help of mind balancing, mind calming activities, the homeless community can be helped and turned around for the better; better improvements for themselves and for their environments.

Becoming homeless is a major change to the life of a person, something that can put them into a state of mental instability, lack of motivation, just utter withdrawal because hope may be lost in their eyes. They begin to give up on trying to succeed in life, they stop taking care of themselves, and they sit around like vegetables. These individuals, stricken with poverty, have not received nearly enough empathy or help. This could only lead to fuller shelters; all of which, filled with those who are too unmotivated to move on with the lives they have. Relocated from previous paragraph"The goal of the pilot project was to develop, offer, and evaluate the effects of the program using noetic or integral approaches to bringing together body, mind, and spirit for personal growth and for healing." (IONS) Shelters do a great job when it comes to offering the basic needs that people need to live day to day. They offer a place to sleep, for one, but they also

offer utilities, such as bathrooms and laundry rooms, and, of course, they offer 3 (delete) three meals a day. These are all great things and, most likely, greatly appreciated, but the shelters "almost fed [people] too much physical food and there wasn't really opportunity for this"(IONS); this referring to the mental "food" of the growth program first introduced by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Normally, people on the lower rung of the economic ladder see themselves as outside of society, uncared for and, probably, a hopeless case because people tend to judge themselves on their situations instead of their personality or achievements or their potential. If that mentality can be changed so that the homeless can see their own potential for a better life, it would motivate them to go out of their way and change their own lives instead of waiting and relying on others to keep them alive day to day. "At Home Within has provided something that's been missing though. A source of deep, spiritual sustenance integrated with body and mind to help people to attain a new level of stability, a new level of comfort"(IONS) This project is able to report that many of their participants have achieved "immediate, tangible benefits in their lives that made material differences in how they're able to live."(IONS) If this could be achieved in other shelters as well using this personal growth program, more homeless adults would have a stronger mental base to start from.

Basically, looking at a problem homelessness - in a pragmatic way doesn't do much. Sure it helps these people survive but, more often than not, it does not specifically promote the initiation of working towards a better life. The whole idea of mind over matter would come into play at this point. If we could promote a general feeling of wellness psychologically, it could influence

the homeless people's capabilities in any sense. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength.(Smiles) If people could securely confidently understand that they can help themselves, it motivates their beings to do better things with their lives, such as getting jobs on their own. They wouldnt need the shelter to highly recommend seeking help with the programs offered to set up connections for jobs. This pilot program offers different activities that feed into the building of a independent, confident mind.

With the spirit of self-help, an individual would be able to present themselves to the public and proudly say that they are positively influencing the future well-being of their country. (Smiles) If the IONS program were to be introduced to shelters all over the country, there would be reports of people feeling more connected to their communities, feeling more able to go out into the world and feel like they're operating from a secure base. That secure mental base is what the main goal of this project is about; achieving that would mean a job well done. With a secure mental base to support them, homeless adults would feel more confident about their situations, therefore being able to put aside their homeless predicament and judge themselves based on their own character and see their potential to take part in society and become an able citizen of their community. This can only mean a lowering of the poverty percentage, which consists of 46.2 million people. This, itself, is good news because, at least, it has not increased in the last two decades. (Weise) How sad is it to consider such a large amount GOOD news? How nice it would be to lower that number each year.

The At Home Within project offers integrated meetings for homeless people to get together and

share what they want to share, whether it is their situations or what they plan for themselves. This program also offers mind-body practices such as Qi Gong, mindfulness, guided imagery, aikido, drumming, and wisdom circles. Each of these practices would need teachers and that's where the outlining community comes in. If the community can dig up volunteers that are willing to teach these practices to the homeless community, it is an example of the community coming together to help the percentage that is in poverty. Honestly, it is about time a bigger chunk of the community take part in helping the lower, possibly usually forgotten, rung of their community ladder. This project will bring a community closer together because a community can only be as strong as their weakest link; the weakest link being those in poverty.

With the help of the community, those in homeless shelters will be able to build a stronger mentality to attack the real world and give back to the community that helped them. Does this not then benefit everyone as a whole? The community would grow and become stronger because of the extra people who are giving back rather than sitting around and taking away from the community. It's time to step up and build upon our community so that we, as a whole, are on a stronger, higher rung of the economic ladder.

I hope you will consider this project as essential to the shelter's basic benefits.

Sincerely,

Angelina Tran

What I changed it to What it was originally

Works Cited

IONS. At Home Within: A Noetic Program for Homeless Shelters and Social Service Agencies. IONS: Institute of Noetic Sciences. 17, September. 2009. 19, March. 2013. <noetic.org/athomewithin/overview/>. Smiles, Samuel. Self-Help. Fordham University: The Jesuit University Of New York. July. 1998.19, March. 2013. <www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1882smiles.asp>. Weise, Karen. Record U.S. Poverty Rate Holds As Inequality Grows. Bloomberg Businessweek: Global Economics. 12, September. 2012. 8, April. 2013. <www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-12/record-u-dot-s-dot-poverty-rate-holds-asinequality-grows>.

DELETED Spacing fixed*

I decided against including statistics in this letter because I felt that it would be inconclusive. The percentages could be misleading because the people who take yoga or qi gong generally are expecting to get something out of it. If they are expecting miracles to occur, what actually results may fall way below what they assumed would happen and they may report that yoga and qi gong were ineffective.

Pre-Writing Research What is the purpose of your piece? What information do you need in order to fulfill this

purpose?- The purpose of my letter is to introduce a project that will hopefully promote the start of a community project to help the homeless and hopefully reduce the percentage of poverty. Read over the piece you are responding to. Is there anything in that piece that you do not understand, or anything that you would need to look up in order to fully understand? What more do you need to research in order to speak more intelligently about this subject?- In order to speak more intelligently about this subject, I need to conduct a little research. What confuses me is integrating that research into my letter. Consider how this piece came about. If you know that this piece stemmed from a true event, what more about the event do you need to know? If you havent found a piece or event that this piece stemmed from, what do you need to research to know for sure that this article was not intentionally part of a fuller conversation? Even if this piece didnt come out of a specific event, from what you know of your subject, what might it be responding to? What else would you need to know to understand this full-circle?- To fully understand this conversation, I need to research the motivation that started this project as well as why it is successful. Read over your proposal. Consider what you said youd mention in your piece. In order to do this, what do you need to research?- More research on the project being introduced Read over your introduction. What do you need to research in order to deliver what you promised in your intro?- To specifically state the purpose for me introducing the project in the first place. Consider both your intended audience and your unintended audience.o Intended audience: The main managers of the homeless shelter I am directing this letter What are their interests? What will they gravitate toward in a piece? What do you need to research or do in order to captivate this audience?o Unintended audience: I need to create a very good reason as to why this project is necessary and will behelpful for the future of the poverty percentage There are always unintended audience members looking onto a piece. Who might these people be, and

what might they expect from this piece? What do you need to research or include so that they will be able to interact with the piece as well?- the city counsel might be an unintended audience as well as homeless people themselves. I need topresent the positive outcomes that come from having this project and going through itI also need to show that this project can be initiated very easily, almost without any hassle at all Unintended audience members may also be those who have written about the subject before, those with dominant opinions, or those who have some sort of stake in the discussion. (Ex: If you are writing to Ralph Horowitz, unintended audience members, yet interested parties might include the Gardens farmers or even Juanita Tate and the concerned Citizens Council.) In order to fulfill the context and audience components of this assignment, have you looked at examples? If you are placing this article in the New York Times, what do you need to know about this newspaper and who reads it in order to fulfill the CAP components? - I am writing a letter. The only research I need to do is on how to format the letter in a business letterstyle.