All to often when individuals think about Thanksgiving, they only think about all of the food they’ll be devouring and what they’re going to buying when they go shopping the next day. However they don’t think about all of the less fortunate individuals who are struggling to have such a plentiful Thanksgiving. I also have to put myself into this category because I sometimes also forget about the homeless because our society is so focused on what the 1% of the rich and famous are doing rather than what we could be doing to help the majority of the population who are struggling to survive. According to Poverty Living “73% of homeless people are located in Urban cities, 20% are located in suburbs, and less than 7% are in rural suburbs.” That’s to say that a majority of individuals who are homeless are living in big cities like New York City or Los Angeles. The majority of individuals who are homeless African American (45%), Caucasian (35%) and Hispanics (12%). Each time I participate in a program and we do an ice breaker that has us say where we’re from I find out that some many of us live in big cities like New York City, Albany, Syracuse and Rochester. Hearing all of this I think it would be a perfect time to do something for both our community back home but also for our Buffalo community. We could donate money or time to local organizations like Catholic Charities, and the Bowery Mission or so on, in order to help feed and shelter the homeless. Why not make it into our own personal movement where we could do more than just be thankful for what we have but we could give another family or person something to be thankful? Let’s try to make the most of our holiday time and do everything possibly to make a change even if it’s for just a day.
Resources:
Poverty Living: http://www.povertyliving.com/2013/03/homeless-statistics-in-the-united-s…
The Bowery Mission: https://www.bowery.org/
Catholic Charities: http://www.ccwny.org/