Introduction; Personal Experience

After putting together this blog for my class Just 315J Poverty and Homelessness at NEIU I have become more sensitive while watching, pictures, statistics I’ve realized how serious and important is to fight poverty, hunger and homelessness. I guess I feel more compassion and sympathize with those that are unfortunate to be in such bad spot. On the other hand, I have to admit I understand and can relate to poor people in some ways, I too have experience poverty in some level. Sixteen years ago, I can remember being a ten years old child who didn’t know anything about life. Having both parents struggling to provide the basic means. Trying to settle down in a stable home but I guess the conditions and the situation at that time didn’t allowed me and my family to do it. Waking up and not knowing if there is enough money to put in the table for a family of seven, etc. So I know what is like to be poor. Fortunately the luck of me and my family changed for good after a short period of time and those bad memories are in the past. Now I’m a grown adult and I see life differently and I learned how to appreciate things in life. I hope this blog help my audience and my class to obtain a better understanding of why and how individuals in the society are force to live in this deprived conditions, inside an invisible support system. We all are vulnerable and can be victims social inequality. We society need to learn how to overcome poverty, prevent and help those that need form us.


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Poverty in Chicago

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

Make Poverty History - Bono


Hunger Action Event with Chicago Food Depository





Poverty Definition

My definition of poverty is when a person or community is in a bad economic situation where is deprived or lack the essentials meas such as such as house, education,clean water, food, health care, clothing


The changing face of poverty

Millions of Americans live in poverty, more families are suffering and hunger is seen growing. According to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, nearly 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 2003, an increase of 1.3 million from 2002. And since 2000, 4.4 million more people in this country are living in poverty.


According to Jared Bernstein, a labor economist the U.S is facing one of the worst economic situation and we have to acknowledge that those that have money become richer and richer every day and the disparities between poor and rich are astounding, there is few that falls in the middle class and what is left is either poor or rich.


Finally, Fear and hunger walk hand in hand with poverty, and last year 12.6 million American households -- 11.2 percent of all American homes -- were afraid they might not be able to put enough food on the table, according to the Census Bureau. That's up more than 1.6 million households from the year 2000.


Author; Octavio Blanco CNN
Title; The changinf face of poverty
Date of publication December 30, 2009
CNNMONEY.COM

Chicago homeless crisis worsens with budget cuts, mass foreclosures

According to the wsws.org due to the crisis the country is facing the number of homeless people has increased dramatically in the Chicago area and the suburbs in the past moths. The Chicago Coalition for homeless estimates that “21,000 people are on the street on any given night.” So this recession is not only affecting those with homes and jobs in fact are increasing the number of poor and homeless people.

For 2010, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that homelessness is expected to grow based on rising unemployment and increased rental market competition due to foreclosures: 4.5-6.3 million if unemployment reaches 9 percent. This would represent an increase of about 900,000-1.1 million families.

Author; Kristina Betinis
Title; Chicago homeless crisis worsens with budget cuts, mass foreclosures.
Date of publication; 21 December 2009
WORLD SOCIAIST WEB SITE

Friday, April 9, 2010

4. ACTION PROJECT


My group is group 8 integrated by Adam, Scott, Kenneth and myself. We decided to do our action project at nonprofit organization called “West Suburban PADS” which dedicates to serve individuals and families who are homeless, or risk of homeless by providing shelter, housing and supporting services

On April 7 Scott and I began our action project from 9am to 2pm. I was put to work right away arranging some donations wrapped up in bags like shampoo, toothpaste and lotions. I had to separate each item and put them in a small shelve which later would be provided to clients when the y come in and out to use the shower.
Then we meet with Lindsey LaPointe, support center case manager, who basically told us the way this center functions and some valuable information like statistics of how many people they serve in a given day, what type of clients they have , the process of the clients selection, programs they provide which I will explain later in my presentation. After finishing our meeting with Lindsey we were put clean the refrigerator. There was some food that had to be thrown away. I know it sounds bad since is a shelter and food is suppose to be given away instead of ending up in the garbage. But I guess we had to do the hard task of dumping food. When we finished that task we were told to observe meanwhile. When we came back from lunch we meet with Justin Schloer he is in charge of substance abuse case manager. He’s been working in the area of substance abuse for 14 yrs. He explained us the services they provide to clients who suffer from alcoholism and substance abuse, some of these services are consultation; provide house treatment, therapy, meetings, narcotic and co dependency anonymous, etc. He informed us that 20-30% of these clients suffering form substance abuse and alcoholism are willing to commit with treatment, 85% of clients that come to PADS are most likely to be on some kind of drug or alcohol. We conclude our meeting with Justin by asking if PADS is doing a good job when it comes to these kinds of issues. He said that PADS has an amazing staff and he loves all they do for the organization. However, he would like to see a program where new employees or volunteers are trained properly. That’s how our project ended in this day.

On April 9, we were supposed to start at the same time but Scott and I decided that would be better to start from 4-8 because we wanted to see the lottery at the shelter which is basically a lottery that allows to select which clients can stay for the night and who can’t. When I arrived to PADS Scott and I were told to do some filing which it took us a while since there was a big pile of papers that needed to be put away and organized.

Around 5:00 I was sent to the shelter to observe the lottery. I meet with Tiffany Coco an intern who was in charge of the set up of the shelter. It turn out that there was no lottery in this day because there was enough room for all clients. Honestly the staff as so nice that they didn’t expected me to help and just observe but I decided to help and proceeded to put the mattresses on the floor, bring the pillows and put the cover on it, bring blankets and distribute to each bed, set up the table for dinner, put silverware, put a chair in between each mattress so each client can put their belongings



 



While I was doing this I felt proud of myself for doing this and I’m glad I got to see it first hand and experience this project. Later on around 7:30 it was time to call the clients and check their PADS memberships and make sure they are no in suspension. Clients were free to pick their mattress and put down the belongings. I found out that 25% of the clients have part time jobs. According to Tiffany the shelter usually fills up and they have to turn away clients as they did the past week. I stayed in the shelter until 8:30 observing clients and staff how they interact until they are serve dinner. To sum up my experience I found out and realized that being homeless is not a choice is not something that someone chooses to be, instead is a sad reality that many Chicagoans and people in the U.S can easily fall into because we have a bad Socio-economic and political system that lacks of opportunities and ways to advance to individuals in this society. I really enjoyed helping PADS to make a difference in poverty; I think I would never have done this project without taking this class. It created awareness and I feel  proud of what I did and pass onthe message and inspire other people to contribute, volunteer and try to make a change in poverty and hunger.







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