Homeless “Youth on Fire” - Invisible and At Risk
As someone who has lived a relatively sheltered life, I always viewed homelessness as a problem that was addressed by legislators and officials. It was a problem that never seemed to affect me personally. It had to do with money and resources, and not with me.
And then I went to hear speakers from Youth on Fire, a program that works with homeless youth. Listening to these young people talk about their lives, I was shocked by how like me they were. They were people. They were my peers.
Shunned by a society that has no system of social support in place for them, kids are being placed in danger. My generation is in danger. These people, by virtue of being homeless, are three times more likely to have any type of chronic disease, including HIV/AIDS, than are those who are not homeless (http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/HIV.pdf).
What’s worse is the cycle: those who are homeless are at high risk for HIV/AIDS and those who are HIV+ are at high risk for becoming homeless. Without social supports in place to stop this cycle, future patterns are, unfortunately, easy to predict. There is clearly a place within this issue for the legislators, but they cannot be alone. We need a system of people caring about people, not just of laws. It is time for us as a country to care about each other and stop detrimental patterns before they grow beyond our control.
Youth on Fire (Y.O.F.), a program of Cambridge Cares About AIDS, is a drop-in center for homeless and street-involved youth in Cambridge, MA. Through Y.O.F.’s Speaker’s Bureau, members share their experiences and perspectives as well as provide advice to youth providers and students in the hopes of improving the services offered to high risk youth in the Boston area.
