On November 11th, 2013, Chiara, Rachel, Julia, Carla and I went to Homes for The Homeless to do volunteer work, and help the children at the shelter do a arts and crafts thanksgiving activity. Homes for the Homeless is a shelter that providesfamily-based, child-centered, and education-focused oppurtunity. They provide the necessary support for families and their children to get back on their feet. Our group volunteered with kids ages 3 to 11. The children that we met at the shelter seemed acted thought and talked just like ordinary children. In fact, if I were to see a child like the children at Homes for the Homeless, I would think they were an ordinary child. This further proved to me that making assumptions about someone because of where they live, or how they look is wrong. This directly related to one of our main focus points that we are going to talk about during the teach in, the misconception of people living in poverty. Not only did the children have great personalities, but they also proved that they possess the same education and skill level as a child living in middle class and above.
This suprised me in some ways, because a fact that I have come across (which is proven to be true by many statistics) is that children who are living in poverty are less eager to learn. This is usually because their parents are either so busy trying to provide food and shelter, that they are not giving enough attention to the child, or, that the parent themselves are to uneducated or inexperienced to help. It is no doubt that growing up in a safe and encouraging environment such as homes for the homeless has innovated their way of learning and has pushed them to do their best.