Six Days

We can solve the issues of hunger and homelessness in this country. And it will be my generation that will do it. I have no doubt in my mind. What convinced me of this? Six days.

I spent all of my spring break in Chicago volunteering with organizations who focused on the ever growing hungry and homelessness populations in Chicago. I worked with a team of 5 Chinese students, 1 Vietnamese student, and 10 American students.

 I want to be honest to whoever may be reading this, I didn’t want to write about this trip. I didn’t think words could describe the transformative experience I went through these last six days.

I became family with the members on this trip. Nobody really knew each other before the trip; we had met twice to talk about the logistics of the trip, but that was it. We all grew up with different cultures and backgrounds and adversities, but in six days made bonds that will last a lifetime.

We learned so much from not only from each other, but from the agencies we did volunteer work for. We were challenged to ask the tough questions: Why are so many people hungry? Why are people hungry in the first place? Why are they homeless? Why is it so easy to ignore these populations? Why, in this country, can we not figure it out?

We dove into these questions all week long while serving meals to the hungry and homeless. It’s one thing to read about hunger and homelessness, but to experience it first hand with a diverse group of people is something else.

We looked at the root causes of these issues, which required more thinking than simply “They must be drug addicts, they must be lazy, they are just abusing the system.” We became educated, through direct and indirect service and research of our own.

The biggest thing we discovered was every story is different. We can’t just focus our blame on the person in need and think that is the problem. We need to blame the lack of funding we give to public schools, the lack of funding we put into social welfare programs, we need to blame us. We created this monster of hunger and homelessness by ignoring the cries of help by so many for so long.  50 million Americans rely on charitable food donations.

After all, the federal government just cut $8 billion in food stamps over the next 10 years. Why cripple our poorest friends and neighbors? The writer Aaron Sorkin once said, “If your neighbors house is on fire, do you help put out the flame or do you worry about the water bill?”

When I look at the group of people I worked with this week, I saw real change taking place. Change that will spread as the students I worked with blossom into leaders as they all go out into the real world. I just know that it will be our generation who champions our weakest citizens. Everyone needs to experience one of these trips. It took me six days to find optimism and hope in such a jaded world. Six days to become educated, inspired, and empowered with a group of students. Just six days.

--Alex Miller