Give homeless people your attention

What is this commitment about?

Especially in big cities, there are a lot of homeless people who move around in public spaces, selling street newspapers or asking for a donation. Unfortunately, they are perceived by many people as a nuisance and usually ignored or even insulted, which makes their lives even harder than it already is. You can often counteract this with just a small gesture of attention, giving them a bit of visibility and self-worth.

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What are 5-Minute Commitments?

With our 5-Minute Engagements, we want to inspire you to easily integrate engagement into your everyday life. They are independent of non-profit organizations and allow you to individually engage with people and nature in your neighborhood.

Your Tasks

The next time you meet a homeless person on your way to work or on a walk, don't look away right away. A few kind words (e.g., a query about the street paper you're selling), a smile, or a small donation (if you can) often go a long way toward helping the person. And it can also be interesting for you if you learn something you didn't know before. 

You can also pay special attention if you see that a homeless person is not doing well and needs help. Depending on the situation, it may also be important to dial the correct emergency number.

What's needed

For this commitment, you need above all an open ear for those affected. Just give them some attention. If it's an emergency and the person needs help, you can also contact one of these emergency numbers.

Time required

This commitment is quite simple and easy to integrate into your everyday life.

This project is location independent.

We are a social enterprise from Berlin with a big dream: We want a world in which everyone contributes to a better and more sustainable future according to their possibilities and regardless of time budget, language or previous knowledge. For this purpose, we gather on vostel.de numerous engagement offers from non-profit organizations that are looking for volunteers. By doing this, we show concrete possibilities for action in order to become socially active and would like to motivate above all the younger generations to get involved for a better world.