Online Database Launched

Writing a paper for school? Giving a presentation to a community? Writing a grant to change lives?  Want to change a public policy? Want to expand your knowledge about homelessness?  Want to change the world? Sisters Of The Road has some valuable and compelling information for you! 

A public database entitled Voices of Homelessness: A Qualitative Database from Sisters Of The Road is now available for public use!

The database is available at www.sistersoftheroad.org/voices. On Voices of Homelessness users can search qualitative data collected from 600 interviews with people who’ve experienced homelessness by term, phrase, category, theme, as well as by demographic information such as age, sex, education, military service, etc. Users follow a simple log-on process and ‘sign’ an user agreement. The database is elegant, easy-to-use, and holds Sisters’ entire database – thousands of pages of interviews.

The most amazing thing, perhaps, is this major achievement came to pass through the invaluable aid of six Senior Capstone students (pictured at left) from the Portland State University Computer Science Department. The students chose Sisters Of The Road from among a large pool of worthy community groups to assist for their summer-term community project.

Since May this year, they have been collaborating with Sisters’ Research Coordinator Heather Fercho to reformat the database and get it online so the public can optimally utilize this valuable information, amplifying the voices of our community.

Sisters wants to give everyone free access to these voices of the experts on homelessness to inform their programs and their work - including policy makers, advocacy groups, public bureaus, neighborhood groups, students, teachers and business owners and concerned citizens for their own knowledge.

Another way to access excerpts from the interview data is through Sisters’ book published in May 2007 called Voices from the Street: Truths about Homelessness from Sisters Of The Road. Click here for more information.

Please join us in thanking Hussain Al-Hammad, Chris Hall, Kathy Horiguchi, Tom Schilling, Timothy Welbourn and Scott Wespi for all of their amazing work!