Personal Cultural Immersion
Cultural Immersion
Every winter the subject of homelessness and being homeless comes to the forefront. TV stations, radio stations, community leaders, everyone wants to lend a helping hand to those in need. After all it is the time for giving and helping all mankind. Every year it seems as thought the numbers are increasing, since this is an invisible group it is very hard to give you exact figures as to how many are on the streets every year, but if you live in San Diego you can see many of them every day depending on where you go. In Downtown there are a large number of visible homeless and an even larger number of those who aren’t seen. The homeless are under bridges, sleeping on trolley tracks, in bushes, on the street corners begging for spare change and cigarettes. Every Winter shelters open up and for a couple nights the community pitches in to provide food and drinks to those that have no where to go and no family to be with. On the corner of a very plain looking block in Downtown San Diego sits a small building with no banners, and no signs. It is here that is the national headquarters of a non profit organization that focuses on serving the youth and fighting homelessness before it can start.
This non profit organization started in 1990 by a retired Navy officer, Richard Luca. Luca saw an episode of 48 hours three years earlier that documented street kids in San Diego, California. He was later shipped out to San Diego and began walking the streets trying to identify these homeless children to get them into shelters. A lot has changed since those days, and at the same time a lot has remained the same. Stand Up For Kids has grown nationwide and is a full non-profit organization. The message is two fold, if there are kids on the street that want help, they give them a place to go and help them out. The other is trying to cut down on homeless youth. Every minute a child runs away. This is too many. So Stand Up For Kids goes to
Every winter the subject of homelessness and being homeless comes to the forefront. TV stations, radio stations, community leaders, everyone wants to lend a helping hand to those in need. After all it is the time for giving and helping all mankind. Every year it seems as thought the numbers are increasing, since this is an invisible group it is very hard to give you exact figures as to how many are on the streets every year, but if you live in San Diego you can see many of them every day depending on where you go. In Downtown there are a large number of visible homeless and an even larger number of those who aren’t seen. The homeless are under bridges, sleeping on trolley tracks, in bushes, on the street corners begging for spare change and cigarettes. Every Winter shelters open up and for a couple nights the community pitches in to provide food and drinks to those that have no where to go and no family to be with. On the corner of a very plain looking block in Downtown San Diego sits a small building with no banners, and no signs. It is here that is the national headquarters of a non profit organization that focuses on serving the youth and fighting homelessness before it can start.
This non profit organization started in 1990 by a retired Navy officer, Richard Luca. Luca saw an episode of 48 hours three years earlier that documented street kids in San Diego, California. He was later shipped out to San Diego and began walking the streets trying to identify these homeless children to get them into shelters. A lot has changed since those days, and at the same time a lot has remained the same. Stand Up For Kids has grown nationwide and is a full non-profit organization. The message is two fold, if there are kids on the street that want help, they give them a place to go and help them out. The other is trying to cut down on homeless youth. Every minute a child runs away. This is too many. So Stand Up For Kids goes to