my name is jesse and born in california and i have two younger sisters most of my family are mexican or hispanic descent growing up in sister at some point in our lives when i was ten years old when i was in california there was a lot of gangs and i remember walking to school and it was difficult for me to go to school because i would get beat up every day to find a place she had very much money the language barrier was there she couldn't speak very much english and we ended up coming to seattle washington and stain i remember in a woman's shelter  downtown seattle in the international desert there remember when i was there the only accepted women into that women shelter and i remember she tried to work in several odd jobs there to save money to try and move over to eastern washington where the opportunities for work were we didn't get to see my mom for several hours in the day she work odd hours would stay in that women shelter and it's when i first experience that it wasn't easy it was easy for her she would explain to her she's trying to work hard so we can get ahead in life she would encourage us to never give up to see that if you fight hard enough you would eventually get to a point where you want to so she was a very good example for others especially being a single mom that couldn't speak english well it was even difficult for her so it was great to see somebody there taking care of you showing you what to have hope for i guess you know and if you put enough effort into it she accomplished you know she saved enough money after him almost a year here in seattle with you know three me we moved over to eastern washington and she started working in the orchards and i remember in eastern washington you know when she would get up early in the morning at five or six in the morning she didn't want to leave us i remember that she would put us all into apple been in washington and we used to sleep there my two sisters in you know before school started while she worked in eastern washington you work in the orders you're around doing different things but you know this is just something that you know now that i think about it back when i was ashamed i wouldn't tell my my friends at schools you know you're from embarrassed about situations like this you know but she would remind us at home that she was doing everything she could to get ahead and at same time showing that she cared for us and wanted us to be safe and protected and you know after growing up like that and seen her struggle to get ahead in life she accomplished you know as i say over the years we saw her try harder and harder she was able to finally get her own family business where we were all part of working it together as an investment and you know it helped my sisters and i eventually get into college and pursue higher educations but to think back that i was embarrassed of all those times you know not having a house and it then you know you you were ashamed of it but it got us there like you know she sure is you know what you're going to become somebody you're going to do what i'm showing you i'm showing you that if you have nothing you will have something in the future if you just fight for it and try hard and you know to this day i think about it you know i there's times where i can remember things in my past to this day i i chose to close them out or block them out either because i was afraid  or ashamed and it's just something that happens to you that you never think you would be in a situation like that and somehow your mind shuts down because you're sort of it or you don't want to share with anybody or remember it but now that i'm grown up in i see what i've become and what i've done there's nothing to be ashamed after you know as long as you keep those good teaching is those there's good ways of raising somebody having faith having trust and seen somebody doing it single handed as a single parent even if the language barrier wasn't there even if she couldn't speak english you know and she's a good example you know a good role model for anybody i would say you know whether you're american or from any other country or a woman or a single parent you know you go through it you go through it in life when you least expect it and that's how it is you know you don't know what life's going to give you it's just what you make out of it and she showed me how you can get ahead in life with no longer you know you can you be ashamed after something like that because those struggles become your you you learn from them you know you learn ways to survive and or ways to get ahead i think the key thing she taught us was never to give up inside and i think that's what i remember the most no matter what life throws at you whether you have bad living conditions no transportation minimal my knee no food if the inside of you has that goal that dream that strength or that hope that you're going to do something and also to remind yourself that you're not the only one going to the center life it doesn't matter if you're somebody who has you know a huge house or a great corporate job or somebody who you know is an immigrant into this country and cannot speak the language i've seen people in our in our classes at the same position i was when i was in that women's shelter there was women in there that i want to point world corporate executives and never thought they would have been a situation like that with children the same age as i was but going through the same situation i was you know and they didn't expect it i didn't expect him to see my mom who didn't have been and to see this lady who had everything and ended up in the same place it just shows you know it poverty or trials and tribulations doesn't have it it doesn't discriminate it picks anybody but there's hope for everybody you know and that's what i've learned you know you can't give up on yourself and you have to understand that there is people out there that don't understand that there will never understand there but you can get out of it and you can get ahead and i think that's that's very important for me and i share that with my kids now and i know what you're going through no matter how hard it gets you going to get through it just remind their remind yourself and and it happens  everybody have the possibility or idea of how to get ahead in life and even here in washington i choose to work for organizations that help minority people or people who are less privileged or don't know what direction to go or don't have any guidance or direction and i choose those people get those are the people that i see myself with i've been there i've experienced it i felt it i can now share it i can give hope i can give you know i direction to somebody and let them know look it doesn't matter what you're going through it's how you can get out of it you know and that's that's something i wish to share with everybody and it's great to share with people an work with people because these are the people that are more alive inside and they know it because they're already lost all the material things and they're more prone or more willing to actually listen to how they can get out of it you know because they have nothing else to lose you know you are you have now is just to gain and that's just again yourself from the inside out and that's an opportunity for me for me to actually share in case something expect return but it came time to see somebody get ahead in life and then one day and i've had that opportunity to come back and like you know what you're right i am ahead now i got out of it i have a car i have a house a matter of what it is you know you see the light you see the holds you see the the life inside of i'm alive again and of sometimes i think you know we help more on the outside of the u s where we can be helping here why can't we find more opportunities or better ways to help here  and it is a big dream a big goal and i like to be i'm involved in it you know and if sharing my personal experiences of how hard it was for me in blocking those out for several years in my life to using it now mom she became a single parent when i was about four years old due to the fact that my father and her had a falling out from domestic violence and so ever since then she was on social security income because of her disability she she's deaf so she was always it was a struggle for her finding a job she was self conscious when i was younger finding a job because she thought that was a hindrance for her to work somewhere with the disability and so we managed to survive sometimes just barely though just going to different apartment after sometimes every year we were changing apartments it seemed like for seven years probably every year was a different apartment just because she had social security and she had something called section eight and so section eight allows you to go into apartments you have to pay as much but often times due to where she wanted to live we all just we were always in the seattle area and she loved the east side so she always wanted to live in like bellevue or redmond or kirkland places that were a little more expensive so when we tr to apply to go into an apartment oftentimes they would look at us and say you know they need to think about it or or they would say yeah we'll put you on a one year contract but after that contract was over they made raise the rent so then we'd have to leave  think maybe it was having to do the fact section eight didn't want that in their community i'm not sure i mean to this day but kind of felt that way but even throughout all that she still wanted me to go to private school even though she could barely afford it she'd always go and talk to the principal in and work on good being a scholarship for me later on in high school when i went to private school i worked through school to help with the bill but always wanting good things for me you know always putting us in a better spot there was a time where we were in shelters for a while because it was just hard and that's hard to when you go to a private school telling you no you don't want to tell kids because they were all little more  income means that they had and so you don't want to say you know that you were living in a shelter if it was a little bit hard i was sometimes an outcast at school but throughout it all you know she  really showed me how to persevere and that's something that i take with me you know i want to be sure that i persevere in whatever i do she taught me how to make something out of nothing you know she sometimes we had barely anything you know like five dollars was choosing whether you wanted to have toilet paper or you know if we needed to get food and basic basic things you had to choose between and throughout growing up specially when i got into middle  school going to a private school they were sometimes having mission trips and so i wanted to go on one and see what that was like and help other people back less means and so i've been to about two or three mission trips  the last mission trip i was on i actually went and helped out the victims of hurricane katrina was in high school and that was a really you know it showed me a lot as far as hurricane katrina the victims there  went to mississippi waveland mississippi and they had really nice colonial style homes that just all got wiped away in a hurricane very very sad you'd be driving down the road and you'd see someone sitting in what used to be their bathroom and there'd just be a single toilet there the rest of the house was gone and mazing things that the people down there had to go through as far as having a place to live and we helped down gutting people's houses because it's so moldy  the one thing you know the material things didn't really matter it was the the photographs and the letters that they may have exchanged with their loved ones when they were younger and i remember cleaning out someone's house and i saw over one hundred letters that had just been molded and ruined but all of them were addressed to his wife and so all of them are ruined and you'd never be able to read them again so in the end when something like that happens something devastating when you don't have your home  in situations like that you don't think about the material things you think about things that you're going to lose as far as your memories but that's something that you can take with you as well and i know moving around with my mom i could relate because we didn't have furniture just because it was hard you know we knew we were going to move a lot so we just didn't have furniture to move with us because we had a small car and it just didn't make a lot of sense so we slept on the floor for a greater part of my my growing up we always have sucked on the carpet which was fine it was just normal to me but i could definitely understand how you know when you're out in a shelter or out on the road or out you know wherever you are sleeping in your car you just can't take all those material possessions with you and you take what you have as far as your memories and you take that and you just grow my mom no matter how low it was how down in the gutter she felt she still managed to take care of me and and perseverant find some place to live you know even if we were in a shelter she still figured it out whether it was going to churches asking for donations or doing returns in stores she always found different ways like you wouldn't think of but it really really throughout the whole experience just taught me to be humble and in when you see someone that's in the needy position you know help out in whatever w because one day you never know it could be you and it had been me and i understand things you know sometimes you just you go up to someone you're walking up to someone on the street and you find out that they were homeless and they're all  business suit and you just didn't picture it but they know exactly what you're going and through and i think it's important to you know now that i know what it's like and i help others and and to tell others even if they haven't gone to experience you know it's you never know if it will you know one day they might and i think i was better in their heart if they helped me or individuals whether it's helping them you know kitchen or or going down  and helping the shelter some way donating food whatever they can you know because when they're in that position they'll say you know what i was there i did what i could when i was when i had the money and now i'm in this position and  i think it gives person perspective and but throughout it all today i'm continuing to i'm going to school and finishing my education and doing  what my mom she wasn't able to go to school finish or school she went to high school so i'm going to college and finishing that and continuing to persevere and i think anyone can get out of whatever situation they're in if they really want to probably they can if they can find the help that they need but number one is people out there that are willing to help so i think that's definitely important as well but but it is something that is a big thing especially a need condom you know a lot of people lost their jobs and so i'm sure there are definitely between a rock and a hard place right now and could definitely use that help you know in whatever way so i think that this is a very good cause to kind of tell people show people that it is a common it's a big problem now you know and and it's not seen as much you know some people just choose not to see but if you go down to downtown seattle or even parts of rent n you know you're you'll see people that are really down in the dumps and have nowhere to go and it's really more like water or like an epidemic it's happening here at home in my community in my blogs in my city my with her to the shelter because once again the shelters are not they're not equal some have more supplies than others so the last item that i sent with the family was blankets and my kids were so excited for the first time they had their own bed with their own blanket i think that another misconception is that homeless parents are homeless people that really don't care you know they're so they've lost everything else you know so i find that that is true also for children you know that when they come to school and and they have their homework even it is a real bring color maybe a little dirty because they don't have a table or whatever you know again educating the staff that for that child that is an amazing accomplishment is not that you expect less of them when you respect patients have to go to their reality and their reality is something that we the only imagine in other words and i hear this and that is what they live and that's what they survive and that's what they're come back to school and then later on to you know jobs from so i think is really important for us to realize that the difference between homeless being homeless or not homeless is sometimes a lot sometimes it is a paycheck  paycheck away for so many millions of americans nowadays that it's something that really we need to understand i had a family that slept in their car for three months a mother and her son and when you met the mom you would never ever have guessed that they were home almost family she was a receptionist secretary she was dressed to the nines every morning nobody knew that she got up at five in the morning asleep in the wal mart parking lot going into the bathroom to clean up to get to work but she made it work on time sometimes it's really difficult because a lot of times one of the indicators is a child's behavior may change but typically i'll get a referral from a counsellor because a teacher will have her for the child to the counselor because of behavior issues and the counselor will you know maybe come to me and say hey have you worked with this family and then i would in turn contact the family but the problem  is that you know we can't go to the teachers and say oh this child is homeless that's why they're acting this way imagine what you're is what adults go through you lose your home you lose your stability well i think people don't really consider the effect that it has on