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Speak Up Magazine gives a voice to the streets—it is written by and about those who have experienced homelessness. It is sold by vulnerably-housed street vendors who become micro-business owners, develop a passion for inspired entrepreneurship and get back on their feet financially.
Matt Shaw Editor In Chief Maria Valdivieso Art Director Editorial Team Harry Griffin, Kaitlyn Tokay, Hayley Pierpont, Leah Burnett, Peggi Knowe, Nate Casey
Speak Up Magazine 501 Hawthorne Ln, Charlotte, NC 28204 Ph: 704 - 980 - 9885
For additional information about the production of this magazine, including design notes, printing details, photo and illustrations credits, visit speakupmag.org/hope. We’d love to hear your feedback: magazine@speakupmag.org. Speak Up Magazine is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is supported by donations of readers such as yourself. To donate, visit speakupmag.org.
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THE ROAD FROM SUFFERING TO HOPE by Austin Kistner
My mother had me when she
was a teenager, and my father decided that raising a child was not a part of his plan. While my mom worked three minimum-wage jobs to provide food and shelter for us, money was always in short supply. The first time I realized that my life was different than that of my friends was in kindergarten. I couldn’t believe that other kids ate three meals every day all week long. I thought dinner was only supposed to be eaten a few times a week. I also soon realized that only having two outfits to wear to school was not normal. I didn’t know that our constant moving and living in new places was actually a result of our being evicted. Any time something went wrong for us, I was immediately told, “Don’t worry and never give up hope.” I was reminded of the words of an ancient missionary named Paul, t hat “suffering builds perseverance, which builds character, which builds hope.” Honestly, I wasn’t really convinced this was true; and at the time, it didn’t exactly help to make my situation any better. It was only when I experienced true suffering
that I saw just how valuable hope could be. My childhood wasn’t easy, but I was happy. I had my mom, and that’s all that mattered. Until one day, my mother went to the doctor and everything changed. We couldn’t afford health insurance, so when my mom was diagnosed with MS, it was a death sentence. Not even a year later, she passed away. The next few years of my life were awful. I went to the edge of the abyss; I experienced more pain than a young heart should bear. But as the years passed, and despite having faced a tragedy no one should have to face, a hope grew within me. I began to have hope that better things were coming. That hope that motivated me to work day after day in school. That hope motivated me on the athletic field. That hope motivated me when I worked to support my grandparents and myself. 5
The hope itself never changed my situation. What it did do though was provide the spark that kept me going in order to scratch and claw my way out of the abyss. I put in long hours and worked and still carried grief with me, but it was hope that got me out of bed when I was exhausted after working a double and my bank account was still in the red. It is hope that still drives me to create a better life for myself and my loved ones when it would be so much easier to quit.
Drawing by Jeremiah, age 5
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Hope is the little whisper in the back of my mind telling me to give it one more chance because I am worth it, that I wasn’t made to live in defeat and despair. I finally realized what the Apostle Paul was talking about. True hope, the kind bigger than me, provides strength in times of weakness. While tragedy may strike, this hope will not disappoint. This type of hope allows us to more than just get by...it gives us a chance to thrive even in life’s hardest times.
by Ruth Hsieh
SW
Hope to me is like a seed in a potted plant. It starts with a seed, and then the rain comes downshowering the seed with life Âgiving water. After that, the sun comes out to nurture the sprouting plant with vitamins for photosynthesis. The sun’s radiance penetrates the soil to give vitamins and minerals so that the plant can produce marvelous fruits, vegetables and beautiful botanical flowers. 7
Truly effective outreaches offer a synergistic solution to multiple needs. Homelessness is most often focused on as a human problem, but it also impacts the animal community, specifically dogs. How many times have you seen videos or heard advertisements for dogs needing a home safe from hunger and abuse? It is a serious need.
What is a way to address both of these issues at the same time while also offering the human participants a therapeutic value and motivation toward self-improvement? The answer: a tiny-house community for the homeless with rescued canine companions. Why tiny houses? Most homeless people desire safe, peaceful shelter. Many have a lot of “life challenges� to deal with. Having their own space allows them the opportunity to regroup and refresh. The homeless desire the basic necessities. Nothing extravagant, just a place to call home and get some sleep without harassment. A tiny home is an affordable end. Place that tiny home in a community centered around a place of worship, a community food garden, and a park, and Viola! a giant stride toward a city’s renewal. In 2015, Catherine Mingoya wrote Building Together. Tiny House Villages for the Homeless: A Comparative Case Study. In her case study, Mingoya focuses on Dignity Village 8
TINY HOUSES AND FURRY FRIENDS
By Leah Burnett
in Portland Oregon, “…ultimately, the tiny house village provides a level of safety and security that can be helpful for those looking to stabilize. The more than 600,000 Americans sleeping on the streets shouldn’t have to wait for the toppling of the current system of expensive housing to receive basic care.” Along with a tiny-house community, we could incorporate a homeless dog for each resident. Caring for a rescue dog invokes responsibility and contribution to the society at large. It creates a sense of belonging and participation for someone who has otherwise been an outcast of that society. Dogs have many healing qualities. They can lower our blood pressure, protect us from harm, provide longevity, cure loneliness, instill purpose, remove depression, detect disease and be selfless companions. Homeless people often deal with loneliness, depression and an absence of purpose. Homeless dogs are all too ready to be used as healing vessels. It seems that homeless people and homeless dogs need each other. Homeless people and their dogs need food, shelter and community to be fulfilled. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude the following formula: Homeless people + homeless dogs + tiny-house communities = life-giving solutions to a city’s homelessness crisis.
In her article titled 4 Reasons Why the Homeless Benefit from Pet Ownership, Betheny Green states, “When a homeless person has a pet to take care of, it provides them with a sense of purpose. It can lift their spirits...You need to walk your dog, play with your dog and ensure they sleep and eat. Having that routine, that ‘someone’ to care for and who cares for [you] can make you feel ‘normal’.” Another way residents could contribute to their own community is by maintaining a community food garden as well as a fenced dog park. Community upkeep would be required of each resident. It would community involvement and create a self-sustaining environment with positive social interactions. A tiny-house community for homeless adults and rescued canines provides loving homes for the dogs as well as health, emotional and spiritual benefits for the human participants.
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DEFERRED HOPE by Peggi Knowe
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”
S tatistics show that “hope deferred” does
indeed make the heart sick. Homeless people have more chronic illnesses than any other segment of society. They cannot easily get medical care, and recovery is difficult. How does someone continue to have hope while living in a shelter with 300 men or freezing on a park bench and wondering when they will be told to leave? Every day is an intense struggle for them to find a place to shower, eat, sleep, or to find a job. And yet through all of this, there is a tangible hope. I know because I’ve seen it. Deferred hope does not mean NO hope. I am amazed when I see homeless people at
Speak Up who still have hope that life will get better. I see the hope in their eyes, and I know that they will make it. Most of the folks who walk through our door seem to have a deep faith in God. I believe that is the root of their hope. It’s a pleasure to talk to them, pray with them, and help them get on their feet again. I love their smiles and bright eyes when we offer them a job, dignity, and a chance to get ahead. I witness the seed of hope becoming a tree of life. It makes me feel hopeful for my own life. I more greatly appreciate my bed, a roof over my head, food in my belly and a hot shower. I’ve learned that no matter how hard life can get, there is always hope.
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Give Me by Bill McIlmail
SW
Give me the strength To fight this affliction. Give me the strength To beat this addiction. Give me the strength To carry on. Give me the strength When my strength is gone. Give me the might To get through this low tide. Give me the might To get on with my life. Give me the power To fight off all foes. Give me the power When my power goes. Give me the power To do what you would do. Give me the power To tell all that is true.
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Hope Through a Bed
by Kaitlyn Tokay
The last month or so, I have been volunteering at a local nonprofit that provides a bed for those in need during the winter months. There are a lot of people who pass through those doors, some of whom are temporarily homeless and some participants who will be on the streets for a lifetime.
Each person has a different story of why they are there. Some of them use this service only during the winter during the coldest months, and they sleep on the streets once the weather turns warmer. Every street story is so different, and I come away a different person each and every time that I spend the night. A month or two ago, I met a woman who was spending the night there with her four small children. The oldest, Hannah, was a vibrant six year old, followed by a 3-, 2- and 1-yearold. Although the light had been off in the shared common room where the overnight guests stayed; there was quiet crying from most of the kids as they shared one mattress. Thankfully, I had brought my laptop. I got all the kids out of bed, and we started watching some movies. Hannah told me that she was scared and that this was her first night in a shelter. “Is every shelter like this?” she asked. “Do they all have nice people that watch Netflix with you?” I hope, my dearest Hannah, that every homeless shelter volunteer will watch Netflix with you and your siblings. The mother came over a little while later and
started sharing her story with me. She had recently moved to the south. They had been here for a couple of months, and things had gone south with the family member that she moved in with, so she chose to go to a shelter. “I failed as a parent,” she said. “My kids are so scared, and I don’t know what to do. Hannah loves kindergarten, and she is missing school. However, I will do my best to get them out of this situation. I have hope that we will be out of this soon.” I then asked Hannah what she was studying in school. “Famous people” she blurted out. “You know…like Harriet Tubman.” “What did she do?” I asked. “She hid some people in a train and freed the slaves.” “Who else?” I asked. “President Obama” she said. “And who is he?” “You know, the president,” Hannah said matter of factly (I mean, who was I to not know the president? Duh.) After naming some more of Hannah’s heroes (Abe Lincoln, who chopped down a tree, Martin Luther King, who gave a speech, and Nelson Mandela), Hannah had exhausted her brain power for the night and went back to watching TV. Hannah’s mom told me later on that night that she had hope that she would make peace with her family members so that she would have a place to stay with her kids. As for Hannah, she has the optimism of a six-year-old and is sure that she is going to change the world, just like the role models that she is learning about at school.
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by Bill Shaw
It is a spring day in North America. A wind
blows from the southwest. Everyone is outside, looking outside—or trying to look. There is a small child at a windowsill watching a squirrel. A college student gazes at someone playing Frisbee from her class window. A jogger jogs, a homeowner checks the flaking paint and wonders if it might be a good time to sharpen the scraper. A boy shovels the basketball court of rotten ice. A homeless man walks the street and considers leaving the city shelter. Three girls, two are twins, ride bikes in a drive around disappearing puddles. One man cleans his grill; a young woman washes her car. Someone rakes, though it is too early for that. It is spring…but not everywhere. In another place on the other side of the globe, the equator heat is thick and heavy and the air close to saturation, dripping in the sun. A man stretches his palm and watches the water pool like magic. He sits on a stool with his shirt tucked above his belly trying to stay cool. Spring does not come here, has never come here, and the change it brings, the energy it discharges, never happens. Here the pace is slow and ponderous. No one jogs. A homeless man sleeps on some cardboard, just as warm as he was yesterday and the yesterdays before them. He doesn’t like the rain. I was here not long ago, in this other place, the warm place. There is a different drive here. A different force than a winter retreating back to the far north and men and women chasing it, like soldiers chasing a routed foe. Here the people worry about food to eat and worms in their children’s bellies. That is drive enough. But that isn’t all;
here is where it all begins. Here the sun heats the earth and gathers the oceans, sending them aloft in huge clouds that travel south and north in vast currents of wind. Here the soggy wet air fuels the rising spring and the rain it brings to those who run and jog. Here in the Philippines near the equator and here in North America, the weather patterns are linked and shared. Here and there are two peoples, one damp and deliberate, one energized, one recovering, one still resting, one one color, one another, but all on one earth, with one sun, and one God, though they may not know that yet. These two peoples share what they cannot control and sometimes share what they can. In the warm place, the sound of dynamite shakes the evening air as fishermen clean out the Leyte Gulf—the coral breaking and shattering—to feed families. In another, the bins of household garbage—much of it food— collect on every sidewalk waiting for a truck to come and hide it far away. In one place, cyanide is squirted among the reefs. The coral dies and small fish are gathered. In another place, tropical life float in PetSmart aquariums. The earth is a land of neighbors. In today’s world, they are closer and more connected than ever before. Listening, caring, praying, respecting, understanding, speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves. It is spring, a bird sings, a fish jumps, hope abounds. 15
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THE STRENGTH OF HOPE by Nate Casey
G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
Hope is an interesting virtue. When skies are clear and weather is nice, when all is well and good in this world, hope comes easily. But here is a question: do we really take the time to reflect on the strength and meaning of hope during those good times? Chesterton also wrote, “One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.” When we are at the top of the mountain, we begin to look down on everything. We feel invincible, perhaps all-powerful, the master of our own fate. From our perspective, things seem distant and small. However, when we are on the valley’s rough floor, we see things up close and personal. In life, when we are walking through that valley, we learn the most about ourselves. Hard times reveal who we really are. At the same time, hard times reveal the strength of our hope -- hope that is built upon faith and endurance through struggle.
You see, hope is not putting a smile on your face during the good times. A single mother who continues day after day to wake up early, take care of her children, and work three part-time jobs reveals hope. A soldier who returns from his second tour reveals hope. A son or daughter who works throughout high school to help pay the rent, but still dreams of a college lecture hall, reveals hope. A father battling cancer to walk his daughter down the aisle reveals hope. Hope is powerful beyond measure, beyond circumstance. Hope takes the extra step when there seems to be no road ahead. Hope places one foot in front of the other. So tell me, where is the grace in forgiving the forgivable? Where may I find the mystery in believing the believable? Finally, where is the strength in hoping for what we already have? Hope is not a golden ticket, yes. It is not always sunshine and rainbows. Many times, it is a fight. It is gritty and messy. However, the greatest things in life are worth sacrificing for, and for that they are worth hoping for.
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A LETTER FROM ME TO ME by Harry Griffin 18
Dear Harry, I’m writing to you because I feel as though I have a certain authority to speak into your life. How can you give hope to homeless people? Imagine this: the bottom falls out in your life, perhaps slowly over time or even in an instant, and you are suddenly on the street. What do you know to do? The face of homelessness these days is the folks you see at street corners with their cardboard signs. “Please Help...Homeless.” That’s where the majority of us see homeless people today. To the average folks it happens to, that might be their first or even last resort to getting the help they need. Think about this too, do you like your job? Your life situation? Maybe it’s hectic, sure. Business meetings. Never a spare moment. Maybe you are tired. Your friends and relatives wear you out. But even on the best day, if you really think about it, aren’t you cared for? Loved? Appreciated? Admittedly, you don’t make much money. You only work part-time. You get paid by the hour. You enjoy the job, but it seems to never be enough. If you really think about it though, you always have enough money for a hot meal at a restaurant. For a tank of gas. For a haircut. A new shirt. Despite punching the clock, despite that sometimes you would much rather not be there, the truth is, it is easy and accessible and available, and there are people who open doors for you every day that you do not even think of. The challenge today is this: you need to put homeless people at the centers of your life, just as you are at the centers of others’ lives. You have it easy. Somehow, you must reach those folks on the corners with those cardboard signs. They’re hopeless. Why else would they be out there? You’ve let them down. Deeply and profoundly, you have let them down. Can you agree that you need to pick them back up and set them on their feet? Today, you need to do more than hand them a five-dollar bill out your car window, do more than buy them a burger and fries or a soda, do more than let them cut your grass or dig a ditch in your yard. Remember, it is easy for you. You know that it is easy if you really think about it. You would not have done it if it hadn’t been easy. Your road has been paved in gold. This is what you need to do for homeless people: you need to give them hope. You can do this! Love, Harry
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by Hayley Pierpont It was Field Day, and I was in fifth grade. For those who have participated in a field day at school, you can imagine how this memory is sketched out in my mind’s eye. A hot day. An open plain of grass. Countless cups of Gatorade and water. At my elementary school, field days were met with both childish zeal and an odd anxiety to win. As a child, you don’t recognize that you’re a little concerned about whether you’ll win that blue ribbon, but it’s clear in the way you brace yourself at the starting line. One of my relay partners was a girl named Joanna. Joanna was the kind of girl who didn’t like to dress like a girl, was oddly quiet and had hair that was always tangled, even on picture day. Joanna was also one of the children at my elementary that received free or reduced lunches, an allowance that was all too common at a rural public school in East Tennessee. In one of our sprint relays, Joanna was running hard toward me. Her arms were swinging and I could see the intensity on her face. Suddenly without warning, she fell, badly skinning her knees, and out of her hand slipped the baton I needed to win the race. I ran toward her, halted, and faced a moment of indecision-between comforting a crying Joanna and the baton. I picked up the baton and ran. 20
When I got home, I buried the blue ribbon at the back of my desk drawer, feeling a deep shame for not helping poor Joanna. I had been more interested in my own happiness than Joanna’s welfare; and worse still, I had not helped her because I was afraid of the ways she was different from me. Not long after, Joanna was pulled from school for “family reasons,” our teacher explained. Though she no longer occupied the desk a row back from me, Joanna’s presence still continued to haunt my life; and I found myself thinking of her often in the quiet moments that sometimes filter their way into the hustle of our passing days. In the years since, I’ve developed the conviction that no matter how different the person in front of me, I’ll show them love and treat them with dignity. For that, I have Joanna to thank.
by Joshua Caldwell
SW
I hope to find the right girl for me. I hope to find a place to live and also to have roommates of my choosing. I hope that I’ll go on a real vacation and have some real fun. I hope that I’ll find a third job, so I can support myself and my friends. I hope for happiness, joy, and peace for my life. I hope for my family to live well. I hope that the Carolina Panthers will win next year’s Super Bowl. My hope is to stay alive and stay well. 21
CONTRIBUTORS Joshua Caldwell
Peggy Knowe
Kaitlyn Tokay
Harry Griffin
Austin Kistner
Nate Casey
Ruth Hseih
Maria Valdivieso
Bill Shaw
SW
Matt Shaw
SW
Leah Burnett
Bill McIlmail
Hayley Pierpont
SW
SW
Illustrations by Freepik 22
Street Writer = Has experienced homelessness
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STENGTHEN EXECUTION RESILIENCE PURSUIT EFFORT QUEST TRIUMPH
ACHIEVEMENT CONQUEST BELIEF OVERCOME ATTAINMENT EXPECTATION REVIVE
REALIZATION DEED FAITH PROMISE VICTORY JOURNEY PERFORMANCE
FEAT ANTICIPATE SUCCESS CREATION
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To all that drop their pennies on the ground, There is someone who will find them all around. It is a faith, a feeling, so free, To find a pile of dirty brown, beat up, pitiful pennies just for me. I ask the Lord to help me see them every day, And there they are all along my way. It is a wonderful feeling to know, through those pennies, God’s love He does show.
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