- Hi, everybody.
I'm in Amsterdam, and I'm here with Luc.
And I'm at a church, and you're a street pastor.
And I'm not gonna pronounce the name of this church right.
- It's the Protestant Church of Amsterdam.
- Okay. - It's that easy.
- And I've known Luc for a little bit
but we've been in different timezones,
so we haven't really interacted a lot.
- No.
- And, I was here speaking in Amsterdam,
and he reached out and he started talking about
rough sleepers, the people that are homeless,
that are on Twitter, and you call it...
- Straatvogels.
- Which means, street birds. - Street birds, yes.
- And, oh my gosh,
they actually got the idea from Underheard New York,
which, Willy, with their intern from BBH,
they got the idea from my earlier work with We Are Visible.
And today we just had cokes and water
and a couple french fries with a couple g--
who are now in housing.
- Yes, they are.
- Yeah, and they're in a couple of cities.
So tell me about your street birds.
- Well it all started with a tweet from someone,
who I don't know, who tweeted yesterday,
the youtube film from Underheard,
And I said, "Ah, this is amazing!"
And then I replied to him, said,
"Well, do you think this can happen
in the Netherlands as well?"
And he replied back saying,
"Well, why not?"
And then I said, well, let's put it up together.
And he has a Hatteunse bureau, he's the director of that.
And then he found me and said,
"Well, I have nothing with homeless people,
"I can't do anything for my company,
"But it's a fascinating project.
"I'll put one week of time in it,
"and if it works, we'll do it."
And a week later he phoned me back, and said,
"Well I've got five smartphones,
"and the biggest phone company in the Netherlands
"is sponsoring us, so now, look,
"you've got to set up your project."
And the rest is history.
So we started with four people here in Amsterdam,
And then, after a year when the project went really up,
It was well, with people tweeting.
And it got a lot of attention in the media and otherwise
and a lot of good interaction.
So then I sent an email around to the other street pastors
in the Netherlands and it says,
"Well this is a good idea, you've got to copy this."
And then another city started, and from there another city,
- Oh my god.
- And now we're at four cities.
And it's interesting, in all these cities,
different groups of people are all organizing it.
So first you get the street pastor together
with the biggest mental health organization in their town.
And the last one,
it's just two volunteers who're setting it up.
And the other one, it's Salvation Army,
with the city of Eindhoven, and mental healthcare,
and a whole bunch of big organizations working together.
It's a fascinating group.
- So we're just fellowshipping with a couple of the guys.
Who're now in housing, which is great.
And they're talking about how twitter helped them.
And earlier, you were talking about how,
even the Parliament here was interacting with guys,
And how you did a brief survey
on how it's changing public perceptions.
You wanna talk a bit about that?
- Yes, yes.
I ask people, why do you follow the Straatvogels,
and the majority said,
"Well, we're already in contact with homeless people,
"for work, or we've been homeless ourselves,
"or volunteering or something else."
But also did this change your perception of homelessness?
And more than one person said yes.
And that I found fascinating.
So people were ready, somehow have some...
A lot of good work towards homeless people
still by interacting directly through Twitter,
which is very very direct,
still have a different view.
And it's very personal.
People started following before,
of course they found it an interesting project,
but they keep on following because they found
Peter is an interesting man,
or Francie has these nice tweets,
and not just about street life,
but he has these funny remarks,
or he makes his beautiful pictures.
It's personal.
And that's very good.
- The personal connections.
Any favorite stories of your guys
out there interacting over Twitter?
- Well, Peter had this wonderful tweet, where
- And Peter's holding the camera for us
- [Luc] Yeah, that's why I'm pointing
in the strange strange direction for you.
- He's no longer homeless, but he's still on Twitter.
We'll put his Twitter feed up here.
- But when he was homeless,
he once got rained out of the place
he was staying at the time,
and then he tweeted a picture
of the bus shelter he was staying in.
At night, and he tweeted the photo.
And there was a schoolgirl,
who had to go through the rain to her school,
reacting to that, saying,
"I don't feel so sorry for myself anymore
"now seeing that picture."
And that was so strong.
And that's the whole thing,
just getting people, individual stories,
and really letting people being touched, I guess.
- So many charities, non-profits,
faith-based organizations,
they're almost scared to give
the people they serve a voice like that.
- Well it is scary because they have strange voices
and they have a lot of critique,
and when you do something wrong
they'll put it right into your face.
And when you do something right
they'll put it right in your face.
But if you trust that you're doing a good job,
then why not let people show it.
When they have critiques, so with one of the others,
Francie, he has been at a time,
and also Peter, you've been angry at me at times,
and you shouted it out on Twitter.
- Peter's, Peter's, Peter's, nodding his head.
- That's true.
And then I just reacted like I would face to face,
I reacted the same way on Twitter, and then you've got,
all of our followers reacting to that,
and some went with Peter, said
"Ah, all of this welfare, this charity yells at you people",
and others went with me, "Oh you do a wonderful job."
But that's okay, I know I feel confident in the work I do.
So let people have an opinion,
if they don't like what I'm doing, okay.
But now it's the things you would normally do one on one,
are now out on the open on Twitter.
I found it fascinating, it's really good.
- Wow, wow, wow.
I'm so encouraged,
and so thankful that we went out in Oak Park today,
handed out a couple pairs of Hanes socks,
I got to meet the guys that are on Twitter,
and then got to spend some time with you,
and I had to share this story.
If you're out there, and you're running homeless services,
or even a church group, man, I empower you to maybe,
What I did the other day
getting James a tablet thanks to a couple of donors.
I mean, sandwiches are neat
and housing are needed
but how do you better your life
if you can't connect to the internet,
and then, as an activism program,
or as they would say here in Europe,
campaigning for campaigning,
I mean, gosh, let the people that you're serving
do the talking. It's so very powerful.
- It is, yes.
- So thank you very much for showing me around today,
and for your work, and I'm really really impressed.
- Thank you. Big compliments.
- Thank you, everybody.