"WOW" was all I could say...

I needed a few more community nursing hours and decided to sign up for a street outreach opportunity for youth. While I was at it, I got a little carried away and added Jeff's name to the list. I have been working with homeless youth this semester and wanted to get a better idea about where they came from and what their life was like on the streets. What an eye opening experience...

These pictures were of course found on the internet. I had my camera with me, but didn't end up using it. Just imagine the mats in the picture above filled with people and all the stuff they lug around each day. Now imagine the smell...I really don't think you would understand. Luckily for Jeff his nose was plugged up that day. Besides me and Jeff there were two regular voluteers that led us on this tour. We started at HomeBase where I have been working this semester, loaded up the van with food and hygiene products then headed for the Transitional Living facitily where the youth can live once they have met certain goals and have behaved. We had dinner with the youth there and then toured their facility. Then we headed out in the van to the streets. We stopped at a park, then searched for youth at ASU, after that we headed to the shelters. The first shelter was a women's overflow. It looked a lot like the picture below. Our job was to walk up and down the isles scanning the room for youth ages 18-21 so we could give them food, hygiene supplies and refer them to HomeBase for help. Just imagine looking into each individual face. The lights were low and the facility was not as nice as seen here. What a feeling.

Next we went to the Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS) facility. It is very large and quite a nice building. We found lots of youth here. And lastly to the most stinky place, the men's overflow. Ugh! I got a couple cat calls... nice. I was glad to be surrounded by Jeff, two male tour guides and several cops. I was warned before I entered that a good number of these men had mutiple accounts of being sex offenders, some wearing ankle bracelets and sad to say, a good number of this population would be better off in a psych facility... they need treatment. Here we saw a young boy with tears in his eyes. He was new to the homeless scene and kept saying, "I'm not used to this." We referred him to HomeBase and I hope he seeks help. A lot of youth on the street are victims of abuse and neglect. I was amazed, however, to see the resources that are available to them. One of the tour guides said, "Our job is to point them to water, it's up to them to drink of it."