“Is there still a will in this country to make things better?” Ben Danielson, MD, director of the Seattle Children’s Odessa Brown Clinic asked this question a few days ago in a nursing course I co-teach. His question resonates with me as I firmly believe that we all have the responsibility to leave things better than we found them. It is all too easy to complain bitterly about a situation we find distasteful but not work to improve things.
That is why I am grateful for our interprofessional Doorway Project team, youth serving agencies, and the young people in Seattle who are working to bring the dream of a community cafe to reality. The photo above shows the iterative design rendering of the cafe space, along with Seattle sunshine coming through the imagined (and real) skylights from our pop-up cafe event this past week. The sticky notes have additions from participants. Their suggestions include such as a rooftop community garden, music, a small shower—and stuffed animals to hug.
Our Doorway team is tasked with the lofty goal of ending youth homelessness in Seattle’s University District. We’re doing this by working with young people who are “experts by experience”—and with the wider community—to design a community cafe space where everyone is welcome. And where young people are valued for who they are and for what they bring to the table: music, artwork, poetry, storytelling, and more.
Dr. Danielson admonished our students in class this week to “not be shy about stealing good ideas,” pointing out that things we think of as innovative have usually been done before. For the Doorway Community Cafe we are building on the model of the Merge Cafe in Auckland, New Zealand, as well as the Open Door Cafe in Edinburgh, Scotland. The work of our students and young people from the community on the Doorway Project gives me hope for the future.
JOSEPHINE ENSIGN 