To build a homeless shelter

USA 🇺🇸 “I went out the other night to deliver spaghetti to the homeless. I was coming home by myself and I had eight more batches left, and as I was coming home, I said to myself: “I’m going to give these out before I get home.” One of the places I stopped at, under the freeway, there was a lady there and as I was walking up to the tarp there was some trash in front of me and I said: “Hey I have food!”

And I always kind of stand back because I don’t want to startle anyone. And the paper and the trash in front of me started moving. And a little head pops out. It’s an old lady. She’s all grey and she’s looking at me and she says: “You have food?” And I say: “Yeh.” And she says: “Thank God because I haven’t eaten in four days.” She was so old, she could barely move.

And I just gave her all the food and six bottles of water and I just kept giving. She doesn’t have the means to get up and go and get what she needs, she depends on somebody coming by. As soon as I handed her the bowl of food, she lay down to eat, that’s how weak she was, she just lay down and opened it and started eating.

“It was me, it was me there before. I can feel what they’re going through, because it was me.”

It was me, it was me there before. I can feel what they’re going through, because it was me. As a kid sleeping in the park on top of the slide and the friends in the neighbourhood, they would bring me food. They didn’t understand the magnitude of it. One time I even laid down, I was so done with it, I laid down on the train track and the train was coming but I jumped off because I thought about my sister and brother that I needed to fend for. Thoughts like that come across their minds too, like ‘what’s the purpose, is this my life?’ So that’s how I identify with them, there’s so much that they go through without even being able to move from their area, just the mindset. 

Being homeless feels hopeless. It feels like people look down on you and you’re in like a category of your own and it feels like you can never reach or grasp to be back on the other side of the fence.

To be homeless is scary because you’re out there and it’s unpredictable and to find a place to bathe: You’re totally dependent on something and you don’t even know what you’re dependent on. Like you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, everything is up in the air, like your whole entire life is just unpredictable, you don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day or if anything’s going to happen from day to day. 

I can identify with that whole situation and my heart just goes out because I know what it feels like, I know what it looks like. I don't judge the people that's out there because they're out there for different reasons and that is not on purpose.

I say that if I ever won the lottery I would open up a homeless shelter and I have this whole plan of how I would do it. I wouldn’t just let them come in and get complacent, like they would have all volunteers like volunteer doctors and psychiatrists and people to help with job placements, and all of those people would come in and volunteer and the homeless people would go through a program. The program would last for 6-8 months, and would give them everything they need, let them sign up for healthcare, get involved with fitness and everything they need. At the end of the program they will have a bank account, they would have different resources and housing because someone who is volunteering will find them housing. So everyone that travels through the program gets situated. That’s my dream! There will be some mandatory rules, there will be drug and alcohol counselling, there will be different entities but it will be run by people who volunteer their time to help the homeless. 

I think we all have purpose in life, this is my purpose. I think the things that we experience in life are for a reason, when you go to certain things in life, that's where you find your purpose, not just existing but a purpose. My purpose is to help the homeless.”

#Purpose