Let's Get to Work! by Andrew Jordan

May 20th, 2013 - Day 1 

Well, we finally made it! We have been working toward this moment for several months, and we are here, in our nation’s capital. Our van ride went well & the general consensus is that we are excited but cautious.

We have already met the pastors in the building. Although the area near here is nice, we know this is façade hiding the poor and homelessness that D.C. has.

This trip will be one that will change our outlook on the homeless. The work we will do will be changing the lives of so many people. So as Ed Shultz would say, “Let’s Get to Work!” We are fired up and ready to go! We want to do as much as we can to do big things to help these people of DC.
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We just finished a meeting with two men from the National Coalition for the Homeless, Geoff and James. There is loads of information which could be picked up from the speech these two men told us.

In my own personal opinion, the most information that I acquired from this talk was just how easy it could be to become homeless. Unforeseen circumstances + personal issues play such a huge rule in the process of causing homelessness.

Ultimately, these two men were able to recover from the homelessness they encountered due to positive individuals who provided support. But this is not enough to stop homelessness. There are still between 3.5 to 5 million homeless people in the United States. Many of these individuals will not get to rise out of poverty.

I hope from this lesson that we realize more needs to be done to prevent homelessness. The United States government needs to do more in order to prevent this problem. With the Sequester, this will be an issue. But we need to do more. I really wish that Congress would stop