How Global Starbucks Can Make Local Change

I was homeless last winter and my gold Starbucks card kept me warm, safe and dry. It also helped me utilize social media to, in very small ways, help the lives other homeless people. I am @From_Nothing on Twitter, and I now have several thousand followers. Being able to access the Internet and tweet with my smart phone, which was paid for by a wonderful friend, while enjoying a warm cup of coffee at Starbucks, was crucial for my survival and eventually helped me end my homelessness.

I imagine that the homeless are a very daunting and sad situation for Starbucks employees and patrons to have to deal with, but in many ways having a safe place to stay helped change my life and the lives of others. I am hoping my story might help you and and others find positive ways to help the homeless.

That homeless person you see in the Starbucks, the ones who looks exhausted, horribly disheveled and carry several bags with them, they are not the only homeless people in the store. Look more closely. Look at the well dressed middle aged business man, maybe his beard is slightly overgrown or the the cuffs of his pants are covered in salt and grime from traipsing about in the streets at night. These are the hidden homelss.  The homeless people you can easily see represent but a fraction of the homeless in every community.

I was fortunate to inadvertently discover while I was homeless that my followers on Twitter wanted to help keep me warm safe and dry and they used Twitter to bring people together to provide small donations to my Starbucks Gold card which kept me out of the cold. And ultimately helped to get me off the streets!

What if you could send a tweet to a special Starbucks twitter account and donate your “Stars” to help those homeless people stay warm, safe and dry. Give the homeless a fighting chance to get back into mainstream society. It is called hyper local giving and it is something that could change tens of thousands of peoples lives for the better. Maybe the homeless could be connected to  local social services through a special Starbucks card which they get through that partnering social services agency.  The card could be refilled by people sending a tweet using their available “Stars” or cash through a credit or debit card to a special twitter account.  This could be done right in there community and the money would using GPS technology come right back to the same community in which the tweet was sent.  Additionally people from around the world who at the point of purchase in every Starbucks could add a few dollars to there Starbucks card account to go to helping the homeless in there local and possibly the rest of the country as well.

The hidden homeless might find it easier to reach out to social services with this type of system in place as well.

Connecting the customer through the global reach of twitter, local social service agencies and Starbucks would be a win, win for all involved. I feel the homeless would have a vested intereest in their local store and feel a great sense of coproate and community support fostering an even better relationship between the homeless and Starbucks.