Up to this point, all of our efforts with $0$ have been with people we know personally: either old friends or people we have been working with in-house. And while these efforts have been important and have allowed us to get our feet wet, they haven’t really been good at getting us out to the world at large. Well no more. This weekend, $0$ had its first interaction with someone in the wild. From start to finish, the entire thing happened with sponaneous interactions with the public, and I am happy to report that it went well! We helped not only our fellow (wo)man, but also woman’s best friend.
Alan had been out roaming the wilds of Oakland, as he is inclined to do from time to time, and while he was out there, he gave out one of our cards to someone who was in need. Imagine our surprise when the very first card introduced to the public generated a call-back! After a few verbal interactions (which the system isn’t designed for), we finally got our first client to text us on Sunday so we could properly help them. She turned out to be a homeless lady in Oakland who was asking us for pet food. Turns out she has a dog and was having problems taking care of him. She asked us for a few other things as well, like a tent and some money, but her first, and most urgent, request was not for herself, but for her faithful companion. How could we possibly refuse?
I’m in Cincinnati so I couldn’t do anything directly while Alan leapt into action, but I was there monitoring the actions live. Alan was going to a movie later that afternoon with a couple of other members of the $0$ team, and it was decided that he would bring her some pet food at that time. We had some security concerns, because we didn’t know her and she didn’t know us, so all of us decided it was best to meet in public and with a group. The meet was arranged and Alan decided to throw in a gift card for our lady in need, because he couldn’t possibly let her go hungry when she was putting herself before her dog.
The meet was a nervous one for everyone. They met on a public corner after a flurry of text messages to locate each other. A few words were exchanged, the pet food and gift card was passed over, a quick fist bump of thanks was given, and people went their seperate ways. No pictures were taken, because no one thought of it and it was a tense enough situation as it was. But nothing went wrong, and everyone got to pet the doggy. We satisfied her immediate need, and I am going to text her later to ask her all the questions we didn’t get a chance to ask before. That way we can get her into the system properly and hopefully help her in the long term.
It was a big moment for everyone. $0$ was tested and the system proved, at least in part, to work. A card was passed out, someone in need contacted us, we fulfilled that need. That’s half of it. As soon as I can get her properly surveyed and put her data in the system, we’ll get the wheels moving on the second part. The fact that it worked so quickly was something that surprised everyone, including Alan. If this keeps up, I think we might just have a very good chance of hitting our goals and then some.
