 Hi, my name is Jennifer and we all attend CCV and we're in Dimensions of Self Society and we're here to talk about what we learned. I'm Ashley. I'm a first-time student here at CCV and I'm studying nursing. I'm Nor and I also go to CCV and I'm studying business. I'm Jackson. I'm attending a class at CCV during my high school. What did you learn from class? What I focused on on my research paper and also my personal project was the aging population in Vermont. I currently work in the healthcare field and so that was something that interests me and something surprising that I found out which kind of shocked me was that by 2035 the Census Bureau estimates that the population age of people 65 and over will outnumber children for the first time in US history. What did you learn, Jackson, in class? My personal memoir that I wrote, I focused more on veterans in Vermont. I researched and wrote about how veterans, there's just so many different stereotypes surrounding them when they come back. Once they leave for war, they're not really the same no matter where they go and whenever they come back. What did you learn, Nor? In class I learned that there's many multiple ways of learning from each other and everyone has different opinions and their own biases on the world and I thought that was really interesting to hear from my peers. I studied homelessness in Chinning County and in Vermont and one of the main problems we are having is affordable housing and I think that's one of the biggest issues around homelessness in Vermont and Chinning County today. I also found that too with the growing aging population, that's one of the biggest issues as well and also when we did our project where we had to go out and interview people we focused on who in our community people thought was the most vulnerable population and actually what shocked me the most was that I actually didn't even think about was that a lot of the answers that we got was the youth. Everyone said youth. Everyone said that it was like their first option and we didn't think about it until after for sure and yeah because they need, they're not, yeah I don't know but I have to explain that but yeah they need an adult to help them and they're more vulnerable than just an adult who's 25 who's almost is a 16 year old who just got kicked out of her mom's house and doesn't know how to live on her own so yeah this is an eye-opener because I really don't think about it either. Yeah. What about your guys' video? So we focused mainly on like if people thought things were actually getting better in Vermont like for affordable housing and just society as a whole. We walked around in Ronewski for a little bit but ended up going over to Church Street and we got quite a few good answers there. We got both answers from people out of state which was kind of interesting to hear how like they were just visiting on the time, visiting family and they're impet on how they thought our little society was going around here. Do you have anything? And so what did I mean what what kind of answers did you get do people believe that? We kind of got a mix there is a pretty clear divide that there's a lot of shocked people though like when we actually said the world is getting better there's less people on the streets and stuff like that it definitely seemed like people thought that the world was just changing for the worse people are going homeless they didn't have enough to eat no roof over their head so it was nice to be able to give them a different point of view. Yeah because I you know I would have thought the same thing with us focusing on you know the aging population and you know homelessness you know we we were on the other side of that. So well the other thing that I also think is that has a lot to do with what we were talking about about social media and media outlets and what they provide to us and I mean a lot of that tells us a lot of negative stuff so I mean it's hard for us to believe that the world's getting better better if we're getting provided all these negative things like there's 95 homeless in the spot right here we see a picture but you don't see that person walking up and trying to give all them a warm mail you know it's more negative stuff so I think that has a lot to do with why people think the world is getting worse and better. It definitely seems that society as a whole like we most people don't read stories that are like happy sort of like cheerful like we want to know like what's wrong in the world like either because we want to fix it or we want to feel better about like where we are ourselves it definitely seems that horror stories like just stories about war sell better. So if you want to take a moment or a few minutes to watch our video on the vulnerable population we can show you that now. In your opinion who do you consider is a vulnerable population and why? Actually those who don't who can't afford living in Winooski or Burlington so the homeless women in shelters who are victims of domestic violence and abuse. It's the people that have worked hard all their life and they still have to show something that they're worthy of what they're getting you know what I mean and it shouldn't be that way not for the elderly you know they've you know it's I love the elderly of course I'm getting old anyways. In your opinion who do you consider is a vulnerable population and why? Youth mostly because there's not enough outreach is not enough education on what government is actually offering for educational programs and for money for grants for training programs and there are a lot of them available and I'll tell you in a minute what they are. Do you think the community provides enough resources for the vulnerable populations? No. In your opinion who do you think who do you consider is the most vulnerable population and why? The most vulnerable population and why? I don't know women help battered women. Why do you say that? Why because I'll tell you what there's not enough places for them to go out of Mexico. Okay come on there's no affordable housing around here this is a rich man's state and I'm gonna tell you what what you got is a lot of poor people I'm telling you why they're getting ready to just up and leave this place and I mean that too you know. Do you think they could do more? I think there's more money to do more. Yeah like what could you give us more of an idea? Well they spend about about a million dollars a year on the roads so half that could get these people off the street you know and it's winter here is bad when it is very bad so a lot of our homeless go to jail just to get off the street so if there's money to patch a sidewalk or fix a pothole then that should be money to build one of these buildings for the homeless. What more could we offer the vulnerable community thank you. What useful resources do we provide the community that are actually helpful? Here's the question so for for homeless for youth for just about any age group and it doesn't even really matter if you have good savings or not savings there's the Vermont Department of Labor which is on Pearl Street if you go to the second floor and you ring the you have to ring the buzzer give them a little call and they'll come down and get you and they have a program for apprenticeships and you can they have a list of sponsors that of people who have in the past given apprenticeships to people the apprenticeship program is quite detailed and it's this is a huge program that will help a lot of people. Awesome thank you. I really want people to know about this because. Yes thank you. Another program is if you are of college age and I think actually you can do it in high school too is the VSAC non-degree grant and they told me that the average Vermont resident you have to be a Vermont resident to get it you can receive seven grants in your lifetime maximum cap but the grant amount is 2,500 bucks you can do a lot with 2,500 bucks think that the city needs to take one of their staff members because they got a whole room full of people in the Department of Labor upstairs a lot of people and make one of those people as somebody who walks around on the street and approaches homeless people goes to the food shelf goes to all these places where people have challenges goes to the refugee communities goes to the Department of you know the refugee program here goes to places that they know people are having check. Perfect. Thank you. He wants to run for mayor of Wanoos. You'd want it bud. Mr. Wilkins. So that was our video I hope you enjoyed watching that and as for you did you want to show your video? Sure if you guys would like to take a peek at our video right now we'll show a few clips. We're out here on Church Street for our dimensions of self and society class asking people if they think the world is getting better or worse and so far we've had some surprising answers. It's getting better and worse. I believe it's getting worse more in the way that it's getting better but because it's getting worse I think people are also becoming more aware which is really cool like especially politics I don't know a lot about politics but I know that people are like definitely wanting to vote more and all that so with every negative. It's both right like you have like good things and bad things you have but it's always been like that isn't it like yin and yang yeah so I think it's actually same. Yeah over like the last 20-25 years I feel like we've gradually been getting better but right now we're kind of at a turning point where we can go either way. Yeah it's kind of getting the world better if they like back people doing the right things that they supposed to do we will be getting right but if there is any hate or race then the world is not going to get better. Yeah Roman it's getting better it's a good place to stay and it's a safe place. I think it's getting better and hopefully Bernie can lead us somewhere. So we came out here with a few facts to tell you that it is getting better and things can be getting better and still be bad at the same time. Yeah that's awesome good for Roman. Yeah no doubt I'm a visitor so yeah it's all foreign to me but that's nice. And where are you from? I'm coming from like Long Island. Does that make you think that things could be getting even better? Yeah it could be getting better for that. But I didn't look that much homeless but it could be getting better. Do you think that that's going to continue to improve? Hey you know I think it's like you guys trying to do positive stuff like if everyone just did that like it would be a much you know it's going to work out. Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed all the information we shared and you have a wonderful night.