VirginiaVerburg

Virginia Verburg

Reflections

Day Two 3/8/09

Today we went to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts to see an art collection on display from Safe Haven. Safe Haven is an organization in Nashville that helps homeless families stay together and find jobs and housing. I watched a video about Safe Haven and different families stories of going into Safe Haven and their accomplishments. A few other girls were watching the video with me and became emotional during the last story about seeing a woman and her 5 daughters move into a house. The families generally spend months working to save up money and eliminate their debt so they can afford to rent or buy a home.
Another part of the Safe Haven display were pictures and poems that were taken and written by the children that stay there. I was really impressed to read about some of the children’s goals in life and how well they could write poetry. I wish we could have worked with Safe Haven because I feel like there is more of a need to work with women and children then there is with men. In the video it mentioned that somewhere around 40% of the homeless came from families.
While I respect the fact that not all of the men that are homeless have committed a crime or are addicts, most of them still are. To me I would feel more of a connection working with women and children because I can sympathize more with the fact that they are probably homeless because they have left an abusive relationship or something happened that was truly out of their control. I also like the idea that they do not split families up at Safe Haven. A lot of the commentary on the video was families stating how much closer they became at the shelter by spending months together. I believe it is important to worth with homeless men as well, however I hope at some point in my life I can work with women and children as well.