The poverty group went on a fieldwork yesterday. We visited the Covenant House which is a transitional housing unit for youth in NYC. The goal of this visit was to find basic information about poverty and what difference our group could make in our community. We were a couple minutes late because of difficulty with finding the building. once we were in Covenant House, all was fine. We met with Alice Steigerwald and discussed the work of Covenant House and general poverty in New York. We also learned about how Covenant House and others similar organizations work, including what the funding of a private organization entails versus that of a public organization. When the government gives an organization money, they have certain power over what the organization does.
We learned of many outrageous statistics from the almost one hour long meeting. Notes we took that are particularly provocative include that “the average reading level (for the 16-21-year-old homeless, runaway, or New Yorkers who were pushed from their homes) is 5th grade”. This is because either the youth’s parents, foster parents or other guardians never pushed kids to study or do well. There is no incentive for these kids to learn, do homework, or read.
A few wonderful things about Covenant House include that their vocational training programs help homeless youth become certified in nursing or security-based jobs. Also, because Covenant House is mostly private, they are able to have an 18 month program as opposed to a 30 day program. Also, Covenant House can transform the generally one week program to a 30 day program. This is one of the differences between public and private organizations and this will influence our choices as to which organizations to work with in the future.
Our group now understands why youth younger than 16 cannot be helped by organizations like Covenant House. Alice helped us understand that these teenagers are in the hands of the government and their Child Protective Services. One other thing that I found interesting about the Covenant House and other similar organizations is that they cannot force anyone to stay in their home. From this information, we felt motivated to find other ways to help homeless children that can’t legally be helped by any government related organizations. This will definitely be a question to ask at future fieldworks and to research going forward.