Initial Trips to the Homeless Shelter

On Saturday my group members and myself took our first trip to New Bethany Ministries in order to capture some images on film for our first news video. Before we went, I didn't really about what I was going to see. I knew that we were going to a homeless shelter, but I didn't really think about the actual people who would be living in this shelter, and the fact that they had no place to go.

As soon as we stepped inside, the first thing we saw was about 10 strollers propped up against the wall. As we took that in, we then saw three children, no older than 10 years old, running around and looking at us curiously. My first reaction was, "Oh wow. There's actually young children who are being raised in a homeless shelter."

We then met with the director of the shelter, who invited us into her office and spoke to us for about 25 minutes about the work she does there. She told us all about the people who come (you must have children to be admitted), the programs they offer them (a home for six months, parental counseling and drug rehab), and the success stories that happened to people after they left the shelter.

After talking to her, she brought us around on a tour of the shelter. When we went into the common room, I saw something really shocking. A woman was sitting there watching TV with her child. She was white, clean and young, and looked as if she could have been any other person in America. She could easily have lived in my neighborhood and I would have never looked at her twice. I always pictured the homeless as dirty and hopped up on drugs, but she easily broke the stereotyope. This really shook me up, because it showed that homelessness could happen to ANYONE. The director explained to us that people at the shelter were not necessarily just "bums" - they could have lost their homes in a fire, lost their jobs, or suffer from mental illness. It was a big eye-opening experience, and really taught me a lot.