CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
This morning, as I sip on my expresso at Poet Café at 7 in the morning, I write about my experience coming to Cannes, France for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, which was sponsored by Doctor Home Visit. For this action-packed event, I was in charge of handing out flyers to people on the streets and mentioning that we were raising awareness for our non-profit #HomelessEntrepreneur while presenting them with a free brochure. Most of the people I ran into were focused on steering clear of the rain and finding the red carpet, however, I did have the opportunity to speak with more people than anticipated. Those who were interested in what I had to say gladly took our flyer, which paid tribute to Agnes Varda, and requested more information about our organization and our mission.
We started driving from Barcelona the previous night in the rain after midnight. I slept most of the ride and do not remember passing by the borders up the mountains. On the drive up, I wasn’t too sure what to expect or how I would fair being that I don’t really speak any French, other than the common “bon jour” and other small greetings. I actually have been homeless (not always roofless, though) since first arriving in Barcelona three months ago. Part of me being a #HomelessEntrepreneur is the desire to start my own investigative news site covering the country of Spain on the URL I own called SpainReporter.com. While I am getting that website started, people can follow me in the meantime on Twitter: @Spain_Reporter.
Our videographer, Felix, enjoyed capturing the search for our “homeless hotel” on camera as we searched for a dry area to rest our heads last night.
Arturo, another #HomelessEntrepreneur, enjoyed how surprised people were about the actions we were doing, such as sleeping on the street and giving homeless people a voice during the festival. Our CEO and founder, Andrew Funk, mentioned, “As we spend more time in Cannes, the city is coming to life more and more. Right before we went to sleep, I had an intense conversation with a German film-maker who did a documentary on homelessness at Skid Row in LA.”
On this wondrous journey, I have been presented with the opportunity to be interviewed by two established reporters, one for radio (Cadena SER) and the other for print (El Español). I feel inspired and am looking forward to writing more thought-provoking articles for #HomelessEntrepreneur’s blog as well as getting my investigative reporting website off the ground, which I hope will fund my dream of ending my current homeless situation and running a healthy business.
Written by Nathan Aponte on May 19, 2019.
He is a #HomelessEntrepreneur who is a journalist living in Barcelona.
*If you’d like to help speed up the process of ending homelessness for and with him, we’d like to invite you to make a donation towards his program to ensure he receives all of the network, resources, tools and opportunities he needs.