Am I Homeless?

Today, our group got up bright and early, rode the metro across town, and reached the Church of the Brethren... only to be turned away. They simply said they didn't need the help, but were appreciative that we had taken the time to even go in the first place. Earlier this week, we were told that this church would be closing their services soon, so I feel this had a lot to do with the fact that we were not able to stay.

Since we couldn't help out there, we had a couple of extra hours to explore the DC area (which is AMAZING!). A friend and I went out to the American Indian Museum, while others in our group had a chance to explore the capital and the Library of Congress. It's so crazy to see the differences between all of the different areas; we could literally go through the rich, the middle class, and the poor all within a few minutes of walking.

After doing some good tourism, we all met back at the Pilgrimage to start off our next activity: Bread for the Journey. Each of us packed up three bagged lunches, formed into groups of two or three, and spread out around the DC area to try to find homeless people who wanted and needed the food. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I went with a group of two other girls, and after having no luck walking near the area of SOME (the organization we helped out with earlier this week), we decided to go to Thrive DC's neighborhood. We had absolutely no luck there, either! The reason we even decided to come to this area was because the day we helped, we saw a lot of homeless people everywhere! We all thought it would be a good idea to go inside the facility and ask them what place would be good to go to.

As soon as we walked in, one of the staff members walked up to me and the two other girls I was with and immediately offered us food. I was very surprised that he thought we were there for their services, rather than to help. After taking a moment to think about this, it really hit me that for all anyone knows, I possibly could be homeless. Any person we see walking down the street, going to our school, working at our jobs; they could all potentially be in that situation. Although this was something I had already thought about in the past, the fact that the staff member confused us for being homeless really set that in stone for me.

This entire situation brought me back home. Because homelessness is not an issue we see or hear about on a daily basis in the Twin Cities, many people truly believe it simply does not exist. However, here in DC it is the complete opposite: because people see this issue going on every single day, everywhere they go, they tend to block it out. I think what we truly need to do is educate and advocate. Yes, we have a ton of shelters and other services both in DC and in the Twin Cities, but what good are they doing if nobody knows about them? You can't have JUST service, or JUST advocacy; they work off of each other. I feel as if everyone who is on this trip should truly see this trip as an advantage, and take everything they learned with them back to Minnesota. Our trip may end this Saturday, but homelessness will continue to be an issue. We shouldn't let everything we have seen and learned about here go to waste.

-Yvette D.