Amelia- Florence Crittenton- Day One

Sunday, Jan. 13
Around 4 p.m. today, we arrived at our housing hosted by Myers Park Presbyterian Church. Our contact person, Jody, met us at the housing site, which is a beautiful 1920s house used by the church for housing mission groups, volunteers, and sometimes homeless families. Jody provided a tour of the place, which ended in the living room, where all of us sat down to go through logistics and emergency procedures.

Among everything Jody told us, there was one bit of information that stuck out to me as the most important. It wasn’t the fire safety procedures or the emergency contact numbers. It wasn’t the check-out procedures, either. It was that we were about to work among a group of women who focused on surviving, while we focused on succeeding. We were about to face individuals whose first thought of the day is about how to live or keep their baby alive, while all of us Alternative Break volunteers are probably thinking about what to eat or what to wear. This notion brought me back to an Alternative Breaks class about privilege.

Privilege is an inherent quality or trait people are born with and usually cannot control. What Jody said reminded me that none of us have control over the body, race, gender, or income we’re born into, or what kind of family or country we live in. Because of his involvement with Florence Crittenton through Myers Park Presbyterian Church, Jody knew that many of the girls and women we would be working with often come to the facility after living in multiple foster homes or without a home at all.

On top of that, Jody told us about the homeless problem in Charlotte, which primarily consists of homeless families. I thought about the rich neighborhood around the house we were staying in. I thought about all the Charlotte residents we saw upon arriving, jogging on sidewalks and riding bikes, who seemed perfectly content but were probably oblivious to the pressing issue of homelessness in their city.