Street Smart

I wonder how bad it has to be for kids to leave the safety of their own home to choose to live on the streets. Can you image the level of abuse they must be exposed to before they opt to live in the uncertainty of street living? They are exposed to long cold nights, drug abusers, every abuse imaginable including sexual abuse, theft both of what they have and what they need to take just for survival.

I make myself drive through specific neighborhoods looking for these children, mostly boys under the age of 17, just to remind myself what it is I am doing with this school.

I wish I could stop and tell them there is hope. I wish I could promise them that next year will be different for them. I would love to tell them they will never be exposed to these hardships ever again.

It breaks my heart to know every night as I lay down in my comfortable warm and safe bed, there are more than 7 million children living on the streets across the U.S. That’s an average of 140,000 children in each state.

UBU will be able to manage about 3,000 boys within ten years, but you can understand how sad it is only 2% of the total amount of children who actually need someone to step up to the plate and help them see a way out of their dilemma.