Shifting Winds – OR – Mission Expanded

20Jul10

(Yes, I’m supposedly asleep.  Clearly this was more pressing, so here I am.  Just roll with me.  Also, you should have read the title of this post out loud in your best imitation of the Rocky & Bullwinkle announcer.)

So as I’ve progressed in my professional-educational experience, the vision I have for fighting youth homelessness has morphed significantly.  At first “It was all a dream…” (R.I.P. Biggie) of my house being a safe place for kids to come hang out or stay when they couldn’t go home.  Then it grew into a vision for a full-fledged ministry for homeless youth, replete with housing, recreational activities, and supportive services.  Then I learned a little bit about nonprofits & particularly about housing providers and scaled things back a bit.  Then I saw some other folks doing things & decided it was all possible, so I expanded back to a version of the original idea, but this time with a possible school.  Then I got REALLY smart, talked to some experts, and decided to focus on housing, mental health, and teaching youth to advocate for themselves (which is really part of mental health).

Yeah, that’s a hell of a lot of morphing.  What can I say; it’s been 5 years?  Well, technically 19, if you take it back to the dream.

This is about the point in my story when Mama J would ask for the point.  Well, Mama J & friends, I think the vision is about to morph again.

Not too long ago, I had an epiphany (I blogged it somewhere, but it seems more appropriate to re-paste):

You can crown yourself CVO of OTB Ministries International, hire someone to be your ED for the local DC chapter, support OTB development on a PT basis while you go to work for USMD on a FT basis & get free tuition to complete your PhD with a research plan that supports your PT work building OTB. When you are done, you can launch into US expansion (or maybe even a location in Ayiti). During all this, you can maintain your sanity by living life as a poet & musician by night.

It IS possible. Radical, and possible.

That is all.

-Amanda

Now, I’ve been wrestling with this idea for a couple of years, in addition to my recent interest in pursuing a Ph.D.  (Who knew research could be so much fun?)  The more I learn about youth homelessness, the more frustrated I get about the state of affairs in the US, namely the lack of data and the lack of cohesiveness amongst service providers.  So tonight, just as I lay down in hopes of meeting up with the elusive Lady Sleep, I had another epiphany:

I shall go for my free Ph.D., but probably not at U of MD, ‘cuz I’ve fallen in love with a different program.  And the lake upon which it lives. (See those shadows? That’s due to the variations in the greens and blues of the lake.  You know, the ones caused by God and not by pollution.)  For my Ph.D., I will study the effects of guiding homeless youth to self-sufficiency through community-supported education, ideally visiting various settings to see if/how they engage members of the community in helping educate and support homeless youth as they move upward in life.  My ultimate goal is to have a framework for ending youth homelessness that can be replicated in urban areas nationally (at least) and adapted to rural areas.

So, rather than trying to figure out how long I need to stay in various cities to start up satellite locations of one particular housing program, I can “get my travel on” and help cities develop resources and networks to address the needs of homeless youth in their midst.  As much as we in the ::cough:: “industry” ::cough:: love to say we hope that housing providers will eventually go out of business, it is a rather unfortunate truth that there will always be parents who make horrible decisions, kids who leave home in search of something “other”, and other unpleasant misfortunes that result in young people needing some place to stay.  With that in mind, cities will always need to be on top of their game in meeting these young people’s needs, and my goal is to be the best at helping them do so.

And now, I shall do the cabbage patch.  You should join me.  What’s that?  You don’t know how?  Psshhhtt.

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Filed under: Good Stuff, Ideation, Nonprofits, This Is Me   |  1 Comment
Tags: Education, Goals, Law & Policy, LinkedIn, Nonprofits, Professional Development, Travel, Youth Homelessness