This is the last in a series by many of our young interns and volunteers. We asked them to write about how "National Hunger and Homelessness Week"  (Nov. 15-21, 2009) spurs them to view the work they do with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

Homelessness became personal to me a little over a year ago: I began to volunteer with a homeless day shelter in my community, and actually took the time to get to know the people that previously might have just slowed me down on my walk to work, or annoyed me with solicitations on the train. 

I was forced to take a step back and slow down on my own for more than a year after I was laid off from my full-time job in the corporate environment. I contemplated the next step in my life. During that period, I also spent time weekly with the homeless people in my neighborhood. Though we shared unemployment as a commonality, it seemed on the surface there was little else.

After a year of serving them coffee, playing hundreds of card games and watching the economy suffer severely, I began to realize that we were not so different. The judgments I previously would have made (though perhaps kept to myself) about why these men were in the situations they were in, had been destroyed. As I found my own income and savings dwindling, still without a job and unable to afford my own apartment, I began to see how easily someone can slip through the cracks. I realized the privileges that I was thankfully born into would most likely keep me from slipping.

Thankfully, I now have the opportunity to be back in school full-time, pursuing a graduate degree in social work. I found myself interning at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless because, after I sifted through part-time job opportunities, I read that “housing is a human right in a just society” and I knew theirs was a mission I wanted to be a part of.  

- Tabitha Pederson, Development Intern

Master’s candidate, Social Service Administration at theUniversity of Chicago