Poverty & Homelessness in a Foreign Land: Are We Careless or Too Busy to Care?
BY Behshad Hastibakhsh

On Vancouver's busiest shopping street, the fainting voice of a middle-aged man gets unnoticed. He begs for food, money, cloth and basic necessities, underneath the steps of a restaurant located next to a drug store and an ATM. How ironic!

Few people seem to care about his silent cry for help. He has been reduced to a social outcast without proper identity.

Wearing worn-out cloth, the man looks for familiar faces among passing pedestrians. Occasionally, he raises his voice and speaks in Persian: 'Please help me, I'm sick'. His voice stutters out of shame and guilt. He is Vancouver's first Iranian homeless.

The man's past is a mystery; his fate remains uncertain. He crawls in life, one hour at a time. Yet, few acknowledge his presence on the sidewalk.

At the very edge of Canada's scenic west coast, Vancouver is home to a growing Iranian community with its own distinct challenges. While waves of new immigrants make the daring journey half across the world, personal stories of individual hardships remain unrecorded. And the tale of the homeless man on Robson Street remains untold.

Images of the homeless Iranian are vivid and painful. They are a reflection of carelessness in our society. These images ought to awaken our collective conscious. There are certainly more examples of the working poor, students living in substandard conditions, and fellow compatriots in extreme psychological and emotional distress.

But does anyone care? Judging by the lack of media and public attention to the case of Vancouver's first Iranian homeless, it is fair to assume that our community is either careless or simply too busy to care. Either way, one cannot justify the existing apathy and inaction.

Poverty and homelessness are global concerns which do not disappear by lying blame on governments, social classes, individuals, or other external factors in life. It is equally unacceptable to view them as someone else's problem.

What happened to good old traditions of caring and looking after one another? Why cannot we work in unison to generate greater awareness on existing social problems in own our backyards, to raise funds, and to organize food drive campaigns for the poor and the homeless?

Benefiting from fundraising experience of well-established institutions, the younger generation may well best be equipped to launch new innovative ideas towards complementing government sponsored social programs with grassroots initiatives. However, it takes a communal effort and the desire of all segments in the community to address immediate and long term social needs.