Backed by a $10,000 grant, two UF undergraduates are working to connect unhoused communities in Gainesville and Pensacola with essential healthcare and support services from hygiene kits and cancer screening information to bicycles and job resources.
A single-night count by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found 887 people were experiencing homelessness in North Central Florida in January, with 746 located in Alachua County. Of the total, just under half stayed in shelters.
Ava Theng, a 22-year-old UF psychology alumna, and Tara Fenelon, a 20-year-old UF health education and behavior sophomore, are launching their project, Pathways to Wellness, to help address homelessness by promoting housing security. They facilitate partnerships between non-profit organizations and UF departments to connect people experiencing homelessness with healthcare resources.
Projects for Peace, a grant program based at Middlebury College, awarded the students $10,000 to support their initiative. The program funds student-led efforts that offer innovative, community-centered solutions to some of the world’s most urgent issues.
Theng and Fenelon’s project collaborates with several organizations in the target areas, including GRACE Marketplace, St. Francis House and UF Health Cancer Center’s Office of Community Outreach and Engagement in Gainesville, along with ReEntry Alliance Pensacola and the UF IFAS Extension’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program across Florida.
Fenelon said the project’s inspiration came from struggles she and Theng saw in their community.
“We were trying to think of what we can do to create a lasting impact in our society,” Fenelon said. “We realized that, everywhere around us, people are experiencing housing insecurities, like when you take a walk down the street or just on TV. It truly is everywhere.”
The students’ goal was to uplift the unhoused community. They aimed to avoid taking a top-down approach, choosing to collaborate with organizations that already had strong relationships and trust within the unhoused community instead, she said.
They have already given out bicycles, which helped communities improve access to employment opportunities, she said. They’ll also be teaching a course on growing fruits and vegetables.
The impact of the project will be measured using pre-project and post-project surveys.
“We hope to see that it’ll empower individuals with the knowledge to be a bit more self-sufficient,” she said.
Theng hopes the project can connect organizations that may not have collaborated with UF otherwise, she said.
“We would love to see a lasting impact on the individuals we support,” Theng said. “I really hope that they’re able to learn something from the materials that we distribute and have greater confidence and resources to achieve housing stability.”
Melissa Vilaro, an assistant professor in the Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, is the project’s faculty mentor. She helped the undergraduate students conceptualize their ideas, put together a strong proposal that could be implemented in the summer and arrange meetings with community stakeholders.
“We [the FYCS department] are a pretty interdisciplinary department, and a lot of us are working on issues that work towards improving the lives of different people, and these are issues that impact every part of someone's life,” Vilaro said. “If you have housing instability, other areas of your life will be impacted.”
The UF Health Cancer Center Office of Community Outreach will partner with the students to bring its mobile cancer screening unit to GRACE Marketplace’s campus, Vilaro said.
The mobile cancer screening bus is equipped with advanced technology to provide communities with access to various cancer screenings and health services, including 3D mammograms and tests for cervical, colon and prostate cancers.
Through these partnerships and collaborative efforts, Theng and Fenelon hope to see increased confidence and empowerment amongst the Gainesville community to achieve housing security.
Contact Koushin Unber at kunber@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @KUnber27.
