My beloved daughter, Sarah, won second place in a statewide contest in which students wrote about Dr King. She wrote an essay about ending homelessness and Dr. King and I'm a pretty proud dad.
On top of that, the first place winner is a classmate of Sarah's. In all the state, the first and second place winners in the middle school division were Alana's (pictured with Sarah, here) students, and I think that says a lot about her.
Here's an excerpt from Sarah's essay:
My mom and I are both very dedicated to ending homelessness. My mom works at Volunteers of America, or VOA, a non-profit organization that houses several homeless families until they can get back on top of their game. My mom has helped many people and I have had the opportunity to watch it all happen.
From years and years of serving at the Goatwalker [a coffee house for the homeless run by our church] I have realized just how alike we are. When people think of homeless victims, they tend to think of them in a different way, like they are a different breed. But they are humans, too. Life has just been rougher on them, so they have been forced to do things that under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been necessary. The sad thing is that we have enough money to go around, we just want to have some luxuries, even though homeless people can’t even fulfill their needs. Just like Dr. King realized that the only difference between him and other people was the color of their skin, I have realized that the only difference between homeless people and other people is the amount of money tey have. We can change this and make a difference and that is my goal.
Just like Dr. King worked to end racism and overcome poverty, I am dedicating myself to work to end homelessness. I know that I can not do much, being just a student, but who would have thought that King could have done what he did. I will try and that is all I can commit to. Maybe I will help this Earth become a better place like King did, or maybe I will not be able to accomplish my task, but no one will be able to say I didn’t try.
Dr. King was an ordinary guy that did extraordinary things, so maybe I can do this, too.
15 comments:
Great essay! Congrats to your daughter.
I've noticed that people can be really cold-hearted toward the homeless with statements like "Get a job, you bum!" as though a person can, after a few days search, find a minimum wage job and start getting ready to move out of a shelter. And it is indeed possible for some very high-functioning people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, quickly find a job.
I've lost jobs before. And when it's happened, I fell into a depression. And I've been able to crawl out, start job hunting, and find a job. But never right away and only with the emotional and financial support of family and friends because of the resultant depression.
Now take that depression and multiply it by 20 -- at minimum. Homeless people, even if they are not fighting drug addiction and mental illness, are so often fighting crippling depression that prevents them from simply going out and finding a job quickly. Certainly if they've gotten to the point of being homeless, they're facing worse dispair than I ever had to come close to experiencing.
I thought about this when I read your daughter's point that the homeless are everyday people, like you and me. All of us are capable of, in short order, becoming a homeless person shell-shocked by life and experiencing the contempt of passersby who overestimate their own capacity to overcome hardship.
Your daughter is an exceptional young lady and you and your wife have every reason to be proud.
I have no doubt Sarah is bound for doing great things.
Her maturity and sense of justice and compassion is well beyond her years.
Congratulations to all of you!
Dan,
Congrats to your daughter as well, you should be proud. It is so important to encourage our kids to engage in service at a young age.
I am anxiously looking forward to meeting one of the less well known of the civil rights leaders, John Perkins.
Dan, please accept my congratulations. Your daughter is articulate, highly intelligent, compassionate, and sensitive ... you have much to be proud of. I am heartened that she has found a calling but lets not forget about childhood; she still needs that too.
Congrats to Sarah! I heard about this just today! I hope she has an extra copy to share.
We are so lucky in our children in our church--they continue to amaze me.
Congrats, again!
It is refreshing to find young people who are involved in their world rather than self absorbed.
I am sure that you are very proud of your daughter and rightfully so!
Tell her to never lose the dream!
Congratulations, Dan. I think the last line is the best: Dr. King was an ordinary guy.
All of us are ordinary guys. Even your extraordinary daughter. How wise and wonderful she is. Would that we had more like her. Her dream might actually be more easily accomplished.
Thank you, everyone. We are all very proud of her. And I'm proud of her mom, who sets such a good example for her in her ministry, and I'm proud of our church full of folk who similarly set great examples for all of our children.
Congratulations! What a wonderful young woman!
you're daughters words made me tear up. she is an inspiration (and your wife must be also!)!
congratulations to all of you!
Dan,
I applaud your daughter's sense of compassion and desire to give. I'm sure you're very proud and righteously so.
I am amongst that group of people who looks at the homeless situation with a more objective eye. Most homeless are in need of institutionalization due to emotional, psychological and/or addiction problems. It should be the duty of our local law enforcement to incarcerate these people until they can be moved to such a facility where they can truly be helped in the manner for which their individual situation calls.
(In a situation such as John's, did he know he was falling into a depression that would impeded his efforts? If so, he should have sought help as well, if not first. If not, then he should have been guided toward help by others around him. It seems the latter was how it worked out and that is as it should be for his case and most others.)
For all those not within the above categories, we are still left with two: those who merely lost their jobs and have run out of dough, and the lazy. Low interest loans should be made available to the former to be paid upon employment based on their wage level. The lazy are on their own because they're just lazy. How to tell the difference? That's the real question.
None of the above is heartless in the least. All of the above addresses the problems from a perspective based on the reality of the situation and when we deal from that perspective, we can arrive at solutions that work and get there faster. Charity is good for only short term and very short term at that, but charity doesn't fix the problem. I haven't fleshed out these possibilities, they are only starting points. But as I said, they get to the meat of the matter better than simply donating money.
Marshall, I applaud your desire to be objective about the issues surrounding homelessness. Me and my friends strive for this as well. We also strive for well-reasoned, research-based solutions. Living with and amongst the homeless as we do, having homeless and mentally ill friends and acquaintances with whom we regularly deal, we can't afford to do anything less.
For instance, did you know that some 1 million + children are homeless? That families make up something like 40% of the homeless?
Here's one source, but there are others.
Further, I'm not so sure about your hunch that "most" homeless are mentally ill - a good many are, to be sure, but I don't know that "most" is correct. Do you have a source? I wouldn't want to hastily make a plan on what to do based on a hunch that "most" homeless are mentally ill.
As to your solution, though, I'm rather surprised. That is rather a Big Gov't sort of solution, isn't it? I mean, are we going to institutionalize millions of people to get them off the streets? THAT will be an expensive, expansive program.
Further, you're proposing institutionalizing the mentally ill based on what? Are they a danger to others? Surely you are aware that studies would show that "most" mentally ill are mostly a danger to themselves? Are you proposing creating gov't laws to criminalize mental illness so we have the authority to lock them up? If not, on what authority would you do such a thing? I suppose you know we've gone the "lock 'em up" route in the past and it was not such a great solution?
By all means, let's be objective about working on solutions to homelessness, I agree with you there 100%. But let's also be reasonable and smart about how we deal with problems.
I said:
Surely you are aware that studies would show that "most" mentally ill are mostly a danger to themselves?
Allow me to clarify: I meant to say, "If they're a danger to anyone, it would be primarily themselves..."
In a situation such as John's, did he know he was falling into a depression that would impeded his efforts? If so, he should have sought help as well, if not first.
Depression isn't a switch that you can flip. You can't simply take depressed person A, insert counseling B, and mix with drugs C, and end the depression. Sometimes depression happens because one's world really has fallen apart.
My point is that we are all capable of being reduced to homelessness. We are all breakable, and that should give us compassion for the shattered lives of the homeless.
Congratulations to you, Dan...and especially to Sarah!
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