Assembly / classroom session for ages 10 and upwards
Preparation: Cut out 3 mask shapes and on one side put a picture of someone well known
who has experienced homelessness and leave the other side blank.
In your assembly or classroom introduce the charity as the topic for the session. ‘Worthing
Churches Homeless Projects is a charity based in Worthing helping people who are
homeless in the local area. They have a Day Centre and 3 hostels as well as an outreach
team and have supported 670 people in the last year’
To get you thinking a little bit about what homelessness means I am going to need 4
volunteers.
Do: Get out 3 masks and ask each volunteer to put one on, the grey side facing out. Ask
them to face the rest of the school.
Say: “Sometimes, when we see someone who is homeless we might not know what to think,
or how to feel about it. We might feel we want to help them in some way but how do we
start, isn’t it awkward or a bit embarrassing? We might even feel that it’s their fault that
they are there, we don’t understand how someone can end up sitting in a doorway, cold and
hungry when we have homes to go to.
Quite often we will walk past people as if we cannot see them. A lot of people who have
been homeless say they felt invisible when they were homelessness, no-one really saw them
and they felt faceless. Looking at our three volunteers now can we identify them in anyway?
With their blank faces would we notice them if we were rushing around in town?
Behind these masked people are real people that you all know and love, they have
personalities, favourite foods, funny stories and hopes and dreams. Behind the tired, cold
and afraid faces of the people that use services like Worthing Churches Homeless Projects
there are stories and there are people’s sons, daughters, and friends.
Very quickly to give you an idea of how someone might become homeless I would like to ask
each person on the stage to turn their mask round so we can see what is behind the mask.”
Do: The three volunteers turn their masks round. On the back of the masks are four
famous faces. You could use Daniel Craig, Jim Carey, Natasha Lyonne . Natasha Lyonne is
the least recognisebale but a good example especially for teenage groups as her
homelessness began at a young age when she ran away from home. This might help bring
the issue a bit closer.
“These are all recognisable faces. We would not walk past these people in the street and not
notice them. And while we might not know what Jesus looks like for sure, this image of him is
widely recognised. “
Do: Point to each person/mask in turn.
Daniel Craig – actor in James Bond films and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and even made
a guest appearance as James Bond with the Queen for the Olympic Opening Ceremony. He’s
clearly doing very well for himself and we’d recognise his face but he was once homeless
and invisible sleeping on a park bench while trying to find work.
Natasha Lyonne – many will recognise her from the American Pie movies but more recently
she has starred in prison drama Orange is the New Black. Natasha struggled with
homelessness the first time when her she left the family home as a very young woman and
ten again later when her career was not going so well, her relationship with her family had
broken down and as a result she suffered poor health. Many of our clients struggle with
homelessness as a result of damaged family relationships.
Jim Carey became homeless at the age of 12 when his father lost his job and the family slept
in a camper van. Eventually they got back on their feet but this was a difficult time for the –
something a lot of the people we support can attest to as job loss or redundancy can be a
cause of homelessness.
These famous faces once felt invisible too when people struggled to know how to respond
to them and often ignored them instead. Your donations help the people charities like
Worthing Churches Homeless Projects support feel like they are visible again, that people
see them and know that they need support. What might seem like a small gesture to you
bringing in a tin of vegetables or a jar of coffee can make all the difference to the people he
charity work with.
Thank you for supporting Worthing Churches Homeless Projects.