Information table at the Atrium, Thursday 2/26 from 11-1:30.
Muncie Mission Ministries offers a place to sleep, three meals a day and spiritual counseling for homeless men in Delaware County.
Despite setbacks, five public relations students are taking part in a national competition to raise awareness of homelessness.
The competition is called the Bateman Case Study Competition, and is hosted by the Public Relations Student Society of America. PRSSA chapters around the nation are challenged to research, plan and implement a public relations campaign. This year is the first year Ball State’s PRSSA chapter has participated since 2012, when they won an honorable mention for their campaign raising awareness for childhood obesity.
Frank Gengo, a junior public relations student and a member of Ball State's team, said there were two teams from Ball State’s chapter initially, but several people from both teams decided to drop out.
“It’s been kind of rough, just from our side specifically,” Gengo said. “We ended up having to combine teams and restructure a lot about halfway through [the competition], which was difficult but we managed.”
The team was tasked with pairing with a nonprofit organization and encouraging them to join a movement called Home Matters, which raises awareness for homelessness and the importance of homes to individual and familial well being. The team chose to partner with Muncie Mission Ministries, a local homeless shelter.
Frank Baldwin, executive director of Muncie Mission Ministries, said he has had positive experiences with the students on the team. He said they interviewed him and toured the Mission’s facilities during the planning phase of the project. The team also helped promote the annual Walk-A-Mile, which is one of the Muncie Mission’s main fundraising events.
“I cannot say enough on how encouraging it is to see students involved at this age, on what I consider the most important issues that we have,” Baldwin said. “It may be a project right now, but there’s a transformation that’s taking place in their life, the compassion that’s being developed and growing — it’s already there, but it’s being nurtured — and that’s going to follow them through the rest of their life and help make this world a better world to live in.”
Michaela Cloud, a junior public relations student and member of the team, said she enjoyed the local involvement. Besides the Muncie Mission, the team also interviewed the Muncie Action Plan and the local YWCA.
“It’s really interesting just to learn about the community in general,” Cloud said. “Muncie Mission, they really provide so much for the community, and it’s all funded from donations and that really just blows my mind, what they do.”
Cloud said the project is mostly student-lead.
“One thing we will be doing in PR is creating campaigns, so this is literally just student run. We do have advisers but they can’t tell us [what to do],” Cloud said. “I’ve never done a campaign before, so I think it’s really interesting starting from scratch and having to learn things on your own.”
The planning and research stage, which began after competition entry deadline at the beginning of November, concluded at the end of January.
February is the implementation stage during which the team is planning to hand out fliers showing information about homelessness. Evaluation and judging come after the implementation stage, and the three finalists will be notified mid-April.
Even with all the difficulties her team faced, Cloud said she was proud of how much her team accomplished in the amount of time they had.
“I’m glad I’ve had the experience, I wish we could have started earlier, but I’m really proud of what we’ve done,” Cloud said. “Just the progress we’ve literally made from a month ago… I didn’t think it was possible, but we did it.”
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