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| Courtesy: phillystreetmag.blogspot.com |
For those who have been following along, you’re aware
that I’ve been reflecting on the work of a former student of mine, Tyjae. I had
Tyjae as a 6th grade student back at the beginning of the 2010s.
That moment of pride aside, another rose in its place.
Over the course of two weekends in November, Tyjae and
his team of family and friends set out to provide food and clothing band aids
to our homeless neighbors in Kensington. Ignoring the chitter chatter against
engaging in these types of efforts believing they “enable” the homeless or those struggling with addictions, Tyjae’s goal was to provide clothes and something to eat at those particular
moments in time; not at some future point in a possible shelter with maybe some
services.
It’s an understatement to note that our neighbors were very appreciative and expressed as much! As one man put it, “Just a blessing you know, thank you…because
we’re struggling ourselves. Thank you and God bless you!”
The foci of this
final reflection are just a few of those who assisted Tyjae in putting these
events together. When asked how important it was for them to be out there,
doing what they were doing, here’s how they responded:
Rahsheen
“I feel as though this is important. All my life I wanted
to do something like this because I see that a lot of people that got a lot of
money don’t do stuff like this. And I don’t have a lot of money myself but I
just always wanted to give back. I would like to do it again anytime.”
John
“Very important…come out here just to show love, to give
back to those less fortunate, you know. We have donations and we have other
donations from families and friends and we just tryna give back just on the
positive, not tryna get any recognition…really from the heart.”
Jordan
“It’s good because it’s not a lot of young people out
here doin’ stuff like this because they afraid at a certain image, like to do
positive things, it’s not bad to give back, it’s a good thing, you gone get
blessings from it.”
Ant
“Yeah, it’s a lot going on, you just gotta help people
out, not everybody got it, some people don’t eat every day, some people really got
real struggles that people really don’t understand. It’s a lot of people like
that. Seeing people come through, they need stuff so it’s like good, so I thank
Ty all the time, like “Bro this really heavy!””
[My bad bro, forgot ya name, hmu]
“It’s important to do this for our community because it’s
important to lift each other up as a people and like he said it’s not a lot of people
that are fortunate to do that. We
take a lot of stuff for granted,
even waking up every day. So to be able to wake up every day, have clothes on
our back, somewhere to sleep, and not everybody has the opportunity to be able
to provide stuff like this to people that don’t. Feels great!”
Tara
“Being a person who organized this event, I appreciate
being able to see the people I’m helping. It’s a rawness about it being under
the subway, people walking past, seeing their story on their faces, them
telling me their story. It just reminds me of how pertinent it is to give back!”
To read more
about Tyjae and his work, hit him up.
Instagram - (see below)
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