This week’s guide of the week is Milton, who offers educational walking tours and immersion experiences about homelessness. He is a dear friend to us, and we keep in touch every day about ways to educate the public about social and economic issues that affect homelessness.

His story is best told through the above video, but we also want to take some time to tell you the story of how we met him. One afternoon June, our Ambassador of Community, was working at the Glide Foundation soup kitchen, putting forks and napkins on trays for the hundreds of people who poured in for dinner. Working alongside her was Milton, and as they talked, she discovered that Milton himself was homeless but volunteers at Glide every day trying to help others in poverty. Once the entire Vayable team heard Milton’s story, we were all inspired and wanted to get to know him better. The next day, he took us around the Tenderloin, where he told us about the stories of hope and despair that plague so many people in our own city.

As a homeless person himself, Milton has insight on the homeless community that you simply can’t find anywhere else.  He embodies what Vayable is all about: he has a unique perspective, has lived an amazing story, and gives you access to a world many people have strong opinions about yet do not understand. We learned about the complexity of the issue and reasons why it’s so difficult to do social reform.

We are humbled and grateful that he is offering his knowledge and time to show the world what it’s really like to be homeless. If you want to meet him in person, you can come out to our event next Wednesday at 111 Minna, where he will be speaking.