Talk:National Runaway Safeline

Latest comment: 4 years ago by 98.100.201.242 in topic This article needs help.

This article needs help. edit

It looks like an advertisement for those who might be benefited by this organizations services, not an encyclopedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dakane2 (talkcontribs) 02:59, 22 April 2014 (UTC)Reply

Being a little picky here, but in case anyone cares to flesh out the history a bit...article states "In 1971, Metro-Help was established to help Chicago youth in crisis as a clearinghouse to connect them with services throughout the region. In 1974, the crisis line received an 8-month demonstration grant from the federal government to expand its scope from a local line to a national call center and a short time later changed its name to National Runaway Switchboard." Somewhat misleading in that it implies Metro-Help changed its name in '74 or '75. It did not. Metro-Help continued to run as a Chicago-area general-purpose crisis line, while operating NRS to assist runaways nationwide. While i was a volunteer there approx 1978 to 1981, MH and NRS calls came in on different phone lines (routed to the same phones answered by the same volunteers) and the service as a whole was billed as "Metro-Help and the National Runaway Switchboard" but casually referred to as "Metro-Help." and yeah, comment above is right; article is basically verbatim official PR. Not necessarily untrue, but not at all encyclopedic. Metro-Help back in the day was rather counterculture--created in part because the establishments-that-be were not serving the population's needs--and we would have ROFL at this article. There was a constant struggle to maintain its principles in the face of the need for funding, and that demo grant & subsequent continuance of NRS was smack in the middle of it all. I wish i had time to devote to a real re-write of the article, or better yet, create a Metro-Help article. Maybe someone else can follow thru? Seeing as how i'm the first person posting anything here since 2014, i ain't holdin my breath. :-D — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.100.201.242 (talk) 00:35, 1 January 2020 (UTC)Reply