By Mark Baratelli
Editor
Without identification, there's not much you can do legal in society. You can't get into school, get a job, get into most shelters, get a hotel room, cash a check, or vote. There are numerous barriers to self-sufficiency without identification.
On August Thursday August 26, 2010, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer led a team of City staff members and community volunteers at the Orlando Union Rescue Mission as they provided Florida ID cards, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards and other documents to the area’s impoverished and homeless citizens through IDentity, a local charity born in 2008.
I spoke with the Michael Dippy, Executive Director of IDignity, in the video above. IDentity gets all the government agencies necessary to provide identification together in one facility at one time for one day, once a month, to ease the burden of getting identification particularly for the homeless and the poor. All costs are covered.
IDignity was formed by a coalition of Downtown churches: The Cathedral Church of St. Luke, First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, First United Methodist Church of Orlando, St. James Catholic Cathedral and Trinity Lutheran Church. The IDignity team works with representatives from the Orlando Union Rescue Mission, Homeless Services Network, Legal Advocacy at Work, Florida Division of Driver Licenses, Orange County Health Department, Social Security Administration and Veterans Affairs in order to make this initiative a great success.