Reverend Charles Loring Brace Essay

Can one person’s motivation for change be powerful enough to make a difference in offering a safe place for children? Is society responsible for providing a home, food, clothes, education, and hope to youth? According to Reverend Charles Loring Brace, programs should be available “to help the children help themselves” (Warren 23). Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society and the Orphan Train Movement in 1853 when there were approximately ten thousand homeless children on the streets in New York City (Trammell 4). Despite some imperfections, the positives outweigh the negatives in putting children on the orphan trains due to successfully removing at-risk children off the streets, establishing social services for children and families, and creating foster care agencies to replace orphanages. Unquestionably, the

Although statistically it is difficult to evaluate the Orphan Train success, society has made a safer place for our children in creating: new laws, children and family social services, foster care programs, and adoption programs. The Children’s Aid Society is still active today in New York. Although the orphans had troubled beginnings and some felt like outsiders all their lives, many grew up to become governors, mayors, judges, bankers, professors, pastors, engineers, soldiers, and sailors. They made a difference in society by giving generously to charities, had low divorce rates, devoted to their families, and had foster or adopted children (Warren 61). In 1996, there were approximately five hundred Orphan Train Riders still living that were seventy years old or older (DiPasquale). Poverty, hunger, isolation, and abuse were endangering the nation’s children. Reverend Brace became aware of their struggles and was motivated to become a part of the solution to make a difference, offer hope, and help find orphans a new start in