A Change of Pace

After a full month of volunteering two hours a week to Hope of the Valley, we realized something. We were stuck, almost. The majority of the volunteers with us were people that couldn’t be trusted. They were, in short, delinquents that got out of jail and had to accumulate a certain number of community service hours in order to be free, legally. Thus, the manager of the thrift store made the clear notion that there really wasn’t any future for us in establishing a program here, but they’d always be welcome to donate clothes or be a supporter for our future endeavors. We thought to ourselves, well that’s just great. A dead end. Or was it really? Within this month of experience, Alex Kim, one of my community service partners, met some low income high schoolers that were picking out outfits for a job interview, some way to look professional. They were simply applying for a job at the auto shop just around the corner, but they seemed completely unprepared to do so. Alex, being in GBF, asked if they had a resume or any prior experience or anything like that. They didn’t. They had an email, a phone number, and that was pretty much it. Being in college apps season, we are at a stage where we know what it feels like to be unprepared for the competitive societal system we have here in the US. You need experience, credentials, education, etc. to get a job or get into an academic program. This is a problem we can solve. We can’t solve the ever-evolving and ever-changing hunger that the homeless population has. We, alone, can’t bring thousands of people out of poverty and put them back up on their feet. But we, as we are doing so for ourselves, can assist the community by prevent homelessness on the younger generation, a group of students with the higher potential to do great things for our society.