These Videos Reconnect Homeless People and Their Families
Deeply affected by his own uncle’s 30 year struggle with mental illness and homelessness, Kevin Adler, the founder and CEO of Miracle Messages sought to make an impactful change on the way homelessness is handled across America. Based out of San Francisco, which has one of the country’s highest rates of homelessness, Adler searched for ways to bring family members back together again.
He started by taking to the streets, armed with a camera and a few questions. His first video was of a homeless man named Jeffrey, who wanted to reconnect with his sister for the holidays. Adler uploaded the video to social media and let the Internet do its thing. Within one hour of being posted to Facebook Jeffrey’s sister was tagged to the post, and within one month he was talking to her on the phone for the first time in 20 years.
Adler found that many homeless people didn’t realize the full extent of their homelessness until they understood that they were no longer in touch with their friends and family. Losing a support system, being unaware of technological advances and how to use modern technology as a form of contact, as well as living day to day for survival, homeless are often in a constant downward spiral perpetuated by a lack of proper aid on all fronts.
Based on a dedicated team of volunteers, Miracle Messages is run via various partnerships and sponsorships in chapters across the United States. With each miracle message, volunteers spend hours online and on social media trying to find connections to loved ones. When the loved ones are reached, they are invited to send a miracle message in response and that starts to open the lines of communication back up again – and in several cases to date, initiates an in-person reunion.
With over 100 million homeless people on earth, it is Adler’s personal mission to utilize the internet for good – and reunite families. His goal is to reconnect at least 1% of the homeless with their families by 2021.
