By Yoko Hoshino
Today we got to volunteer at La Casa Norte which serves opportunities for youth and family to connect with housing.
At first we helped cleaning one of their shelters. The shelter provides homeless beds and bathrooms There are also beds for babies, picture books, toys for kids. We all wiped and clean them up. Some of us helped cooking food served for homeless tonight.
After having a lunch, we moved to another house they have. It was a temporary housing for youth and they are allowed to live their for two years. We were divided into 5 groups and cleaned rooms and bathrooms.
Staffs of La Casa Norte are very nice and passionate about what they are doing. Even though what we did was only cleaning, we got to learn a lot from the staff and see a part of facility users’ life. Although the housings La Casa Norte serving are temporarily, having somewhere or someone makes people going through their tough times strong and feel secure.
During the reflection time today, we talked about the danger of a single story. We shared how people see things with a stereotype, and our own stories related to this topic. The discussion we had today was very intense and fruitful.
We may think being homeless is not our problem and it’s their fault. However today’s experiences definitely made us realize that we need to see things differently before we judge, and then we will be able to find what we should do or how we should act. And I think this is not only about poverty but everything in our life.
There are so many things that we don’t realize if we spend our life not catering about anything. We found it today that we can learn things that we still don’t know if we try to know them!
We are very glad to be able to get involved in their projects today!
Of course we didn’t forget exploring Chicago. On the way back to our hostel, we dropped by the lake Mississippi. Despite under the bad weather we made it to take some great pictures. Also we wandered the town to look for pies because it’s a pie day! It ended up with drinking coffee at Starbucks without a pie but spending time with the group of awesome people is always fun! I’m pretty sure tomorrow is also a good day!
Yoko Hoshino