Personal Narrative: Homelessness At Home

In the United states there are 549,928 homeless on a given night. 355,212 of them were individuals, and 35,686 were unaccompanied homeless youth (Snapshot of Homelessness
). These high numbers always got me thinking, who around me could be homeless and I wouldn't even know. For my civic engagement, I did not want to simply volunteer at a shelter for a day, but rather, I wanted to make a life long difference in someone's life. When I am not on campus or at home doing homework, I spend a decent amount of my time at Chief City Vapor which is located in Metamora, Illinois. That is where I met a guy named Jacob Lacher. At first glance, you wouldn't have known that he was homeless, he was nicely dressed, clean and well groomed. It wasn't until his story that I came to the realization that he had nowhere to lay his head at night.
He wanted to make enough money to have a place to rest his head at night and not have to worry. I decided to start mentoring him and helping him find his way. Every day we would sit down for about an hour and talk to each other about the things that went through his mind. We would discuss new weekly goals so that we could get him a step closer to his dreams. Week after week Jacob would hit milestones that he told me he never imagined he would hit. Week one we signed him up to take the ACT at Icc on June 10th, once he takes this test he can finally go to college. Week two we came up with a budget system so that he would be able to save what money he could and spend only what he needed. Week Three was probably one of the biggest weeks. This week, my dad hired him to be our regular handyman around the house. My dad had surgery so he won't be able to do much for the next few months and he needed someone to do it for him. Along with landing a job with my father, he also got hired on at Le Peep in peoria as a