Black Belts of the Heart

 

     “You gotta come see this! The warehouse just received 240 bags of clothing. Looks like a lot of school stuff!”

     So a few of us who spend our days in the Springs Rescue Mission admin building took a break to walk across the parking lot to the warehouse dock. Once there, we realized we’d have to carefully pick our path into the warehouse through a veritable mountain of full bags. The report was accurate: a lot of school clothing (and a lot more to go with it). Spot on timing for a school year that’s just starting.

     By the time we walked into the warehouse, its staff and volunteers had already begun to totally focus their efforts on processing the sizeable donation.  When other Mission personnel saw the scene, the reaction was pretty much the same: to stop dead in their tracks, say “Wow!” under their breath, and thank God.  

     But 240 bags? Which giant corporation had sent out the word to its employees that they needed to bring clothing suitable for students?

     It turns out the benefactors were the students, staff and families of Universal Kempo Karate Schools Association in our area. Their international school association challenges its member schools to give back to their communities at least once a year. It is a charge the Universal community takes to heart, as demonstrated in the Pikes Peak region by their annual drives to benefit their homeless and hungry right here.

     Years ago my son Ben and I were an active part of the local Universal family.  I know from firsthand experience that the local schools are filled with people who take at least as much care in teaching students the disciplines of sound character as teaching them the proper way to break bricks. Students are constantly reminded of the importance of respecting others, and to take care of those who might be at a disadvantage in life.

     It was refreshing the other day to see their very generous and practical demonstration of the delicate art of being neighbors. Kudos to our local Universal Kempo Karate Schools Association, from its founder Grand Master Martin T. Buell to its beginning students, for taking care to pursue black belts of the heart as they improve their martial arts finesse. 

About Those New Crayons...

It isn’t that Ally doesn’t want to go to school. She does. Because she’s part of a homeless family, she faces a few extra challenges, like staying in one place long enough to really benefit from the learning sequence in any one school. Or, to gain a few friends along the way somewhere. Now a veteran of disrupted school and social surroundings at age eight, Ally has learned to adapt to everything from hunger to sleeping in the minivan for weeks in a row to the weird looks and comments she gets when she goes to a new school because of the things she doesn’t have.

It has been a long, wild and weird summer in Colorado. But Ally and thousands of homeless students in Colorado (along with thousands more students in El Paso County alone who have housing but live in poverty) are about to face something almost too mundane for the present Colorado context: the cycle of another school year. Indeed, among the many thousands of public school students in Colorado, by 2010 over 18,000 were homeless. That’s over a 50% increase from just four years before.[i]

 

That stinks. It stinks because homeless kids tend to be transient. And because their education process is so often disrupted, homeless kids are nine times more likely to repeat a grade, four times more likely to drop out of school, and three times more likely to be placed in special education programs than their peers who have housing.[ii]

Imagine for a moment how tough it can be for a homeless child to be considered a “regular student” just from the challenges of enrollment. Residency requirements -- does it really matter in which school district is the WalMart that let you park and sleep there overnight during June? Guardianship requirements? Delays in transfer of school records, if the child was at the last school long enough to even have meaningful records? Transportation insecurity? How about proof of immunizations?

It takes great determination and, almost always, a lot of extra effort for a homeless family to even enroll their children in school. The same goes for many families who live one paycheck or less away from economic collapse. But make no mistake, school is worth the effort for these families and their children. Education is still a pathway out of poverty. And while they’re going to school, students in poverty are fed there once or twice a day on school days. That makes a huge difference for them and their families.

And there’s something simple you and I can do to help: give the gift of school supplies so we can send our younger neighbors in need off to a new year of school with the classroom supplies they need. This week, visit Springs Rescue Mission at 5 West Las Vegas Street (or to your local mission wherever you are) to drop off a solid color backpack loaded with school supplies: notebooks, pens, pencils, Kleenex, hand sanitizer, blunt-tip scissors, pocket folders, watercolors and crayons for younger students, calculators for older students. Maybe you could fill up a backpack for a student the same age as your child.  And if you can’t fill a backpack this year, just drop off the supplies you can. 

You can stop by during business hours Monday - Friday anytime, any week, or come join us Friday, July 27^th from 8:30 am - 4:30 pm for a special School Supply Drive. Some of our local partners have provided light refreshments for that day, and KVOR’s Richard Randall will join us from 11 am - 1 pm if you can make it over the lunch hour.

Our goal is to collect enough school supplies this Friday alone to fill 500 or more backpacks, plain and simple. That number will greatly supplement the normal flow of school supply donations and help us meet the need of a growing number of kids, like Ally, who need adequate supplies for a new school year.

One last thing: Don’t ever think your school supplies donation of any size is insignificant.

• At the very least, you’re lessening the financial pressure on families that might otherwise have to choose between paying for rent and paying for crayons.
• And you’re providing special encouragement for homeless and at-risk kids to attend school as you remove peer pressure about new stuff or the lack of it.
• In turn, as noted earlier, attending school also gives these students access to school feeding programs.

Now, about those new crayons…

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[i][i] Colorado Department of Education, Homeless Education, http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeprevention/homeless_index.htm.

[ii] Institute for Children and Poverty, 2008. “National Data on Family Homelessness.” Retrieved from http://www.icpny.org/PDF/reports/AccesstoSuccess.pdf?Submit1=Free+Download.