Arcade Claw Machine Calls Attention To Plight Of Homeless

If you walk through any arcade, movie theater lobby or seedy carnival, you’ve most certainly seen a claw machine — that special vending machine device which dispenses toys if only you can manage to grab and hang on to a particular object.

Fundación Gente de la Calle, a Chilean charitable organization which aids the homeless, has partnered with agency Pedro, Juan & Diego to take the claw machine concept and use it for a homeless awareness campaign.

The agency placed a claw machine filled with miniature representations of the homeless, which people could “grab” by placing a coin into the machine. As is the case most of the time with these machines, all people succeeded in doing was dropping and messing up the diorama-like “homeless landscape” the agency had set up.

After users made their (failed) attempts at grabbing the figures, the machine dispensed a card that read, “A coin doesn’t get anyone off the street.”

The dispensed card also urged people to become a member of Fundación Gente de la Calle, which, when translated, means “The Street People Foundation.”

In the end, the machine delivered a doubled edged message: Don’t poke and prod the homeless as if they are cheap carnival toys, and do something a bit more than tossing your spare change their way.