On October 17th, my group attended the International Day of the Eradication of Poverty at the U.N.. We heard many messages from people who are trying to stop poverty. We also heard many speakers talk about their struggles and challenges with poverty. We heard from a 14-year-old girl living in a homeless shelter; her speech was very honest and moving. She spoke about how teens living in shelters are constantly teased and discriminated against. “I can’t make any friends at school because I’m afraid that they’ll find out that I live in a homeless shelter,” she said with tears running down her face. “I’ve been hiding my true identity for years.” We also heard a moving speech from Mr. Jose Nuñez. “Imagine being dismissed repeatedly because of what you look like.  Imagine the only place you turn to for help sets you out to fail. Imagine be expected to fail because of where you live. These are the things that happen to me. When you’ve been ill treated for so long, you begin to expect it.” Jose taught us that poverty need to become a word of the past, because everything leads to something and we need to start somewhere. Our next step is to speak at a conference similar to this one. We want to make a difference and stop poverty. One thing that motivated me during this conference was seeing people who are actually facing these struggles. Not having a place to live, or money to buy food seems unbelievable. I cannot imagine living in poverty, so seeing people explain what it’s like was very moving. Overall this visit had a large impact on our group, and inspired us to move forward.