I love working with children and have an interest in the homeless epidemic, which seems to be especially serious in Pittsburgh. I have decided to volunteer through the Homeless Children’s Education Fund, specifically at the Sojourner House MOMS after school program and the children’s programs. Sojourner House MOMS program provides a safe and independent housing system for homeless, single mothers who are diagnosed with both a drug addiction and a mental health disorder. The program helps mothers to continue their recovery journey and eventually helps them to transition back into the community. At this program, the children are given the additional learning support that they have been deprived of. The children in these programs usually have not had a …show more content…
There is a belief that the homeless population are responsible for their homelessness and that they should live with their failure or fix it themselves (classic bootstrap myth). However, this way of thinking does not fix or account for every different type of situation. Therefore, we should supply and continuously offer the help to anyone that needs it and searches for it. Homeless children need even more help because they have not had a stable person or house in their life; their lives have usually been uprooted many times and as a consequence they will not have the same opportunities that a child who was not homeless had. While I was getting my fingerprints for my clearances, the man laughed at my volunteer position saying, “You’re helping homeless children learn? Shouldn’t you be helping their mothers find a house first?” In theory, yes solving the homeless problem would make sense by providing a home. However, that is not going to keep the mother on her track to recovery or allow her to control and learn coping methods for managing her mental disorder. Meanwhile, a child’s education should not have to wait and suffer while the mother helps