....Marie's story is a good example. Marie (not her real name), who was 18 years old and on the verge of graduating from
high school, had been a peer leader with the HOPE Coalition since her freshman year of high school. The HOPE Coalition is a youth-adult partnership dedicated to reducing youth violence and substance use, and promoting positive mental health and youth voice through a youth-adult partnership in Worcester. She was one of the most powerful and reliable peer leaders in the group. She testified at public meetings, motivated her peers, and contributed her ideas freely. Toward the end of her senior year, HOPE staff heard she was staying in an unsafe apartment and that she was associating with people who were jeopardizing her well-being.
We called her aside to find out what was going on. The story she told us floored us.
We learned that she left her home when she was 15 because her mom had too many kids and not enough money to take care of them. Marie also was not getting along with her mother's boyfriend.
She decided it would be easier for everyone if she left home. She moved in with her aunt for about a year. When her aunt was starting her own family, she couldn't care for Marie any longer. Marie moved back home, but the stress in the household had only gotten worse. Marie found temporary shelter with her grandmother, who lived in public housing and could not allow Marie to stay there permanently.
She then moved in with her father and stepmother. After being verbally and physically assaulted by her stepmother and told to leave, Marie was out of family support options. Over three years, Marie moved at least nine times — staying with friends, sometimes in motels when she had money, often in unsafe environments.
What is amazing is that during this time, she was an active peer leader and she graduated from high school. No one knew the precarious situation she was in. She said one of her strategies to get through this was always carrying two backpacks — one with her school supplies and the other with a change of clothes and her important papers. In this way, she always knew that no matter where she would sleep that night, she had what she really needed.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20131126/NEWS/311269988/1020#
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