Life to look like and then create a plan to get there and we can help kids do better but its in their own hands its in their hands thats a lesson every kid should learn and those sort of stuff the responsibility i can make sure that i never will be poverty and my kids in the role of barbie if i do the right thing. Oh my names wendy im 18 years old i go to caprica high school and im a senior this year there was 8 of us dont live together there is a 3 bedroom house there was a lot of. The economy head and everything my. They both had lost their jobs it was kind of hard for us to even like cat food all my life even now im still on free and reduced lunch so now. I have 3 with my little brother has free and reduced lunch and there was 5 of. My sophomore year i was the same. I was on a journey with our p. C. And coming back slowly nauseous from there and the started noticing that i was feeling different. So i carry a there believing are you pregnant and like i dont think im believing the like i need all the time like well ive watched a pregnancy test and i was like what it is kind of like better and so theres a pregnancy test that came out positive just kind of frightening so my mom told me what any other parent would say to their kid. Youre going to be fine were going to get through this no matter what happens. What am i going to do. When my going to finish school how am i going to do any of us at all. Just. Terrified out of my mind. It turns out in the u. S. Right now an awful lot of children are being born to parents and parents who are not married to each other and that is about 50 percent of the birth of the youngest generation in other words about half of the birth and the youngest generation are babies born outside of marriage to typically quite young parents we have normal over being. With kids who are single parent. Generally education. They also have. Then kids who come from married couple. More of our kids with their married parents live for their whole childhood with their married parents that also can make a huge difference theyll do better in school will be more likely college and even though they might compositions magically over the last 3 or 4 decades more kids are in still families who are kids were both there so i think americans are going to figure this out Single Parents alone have high stress levels stigma comes against them because theyre Single Parents. As teenagers we have these adult problems so we feel like were adults but were very malleable in the sense that were still children in a way our emotions go up and down and happens is so many kids are making these very tough decisions around friends and peer groups and theyre making a lot of decisions around relationships and who theyre falling love with and the intimacy with those people and its just this kind of like these tough things like what really a lot of kids in poverty. I never thought i would. Ever play because i was i am i thought am i standing there i do so much charity work so Much Community service work everyone at school is like 23. 00 Business Units marline and she would get one from her family isnt she the church girl i never thought this would happen. You dont think from one night something. Is going to pop out 9 months later you just think oh i have it once here keep going with 5. And a half. And know what you see the picture and blow your whole world just. Turned upside down. And when we talk about participating in risky behavior whether were talking about having sex doing drugs drinking watching pornography whatever it is getting involved in social media. Becoming really addicted to whatever device it is that youre using if were talking about any of those risks to be i think its important to consider. The outcomes of those things its important to consider that were not living for just this moment which have a child dont. Really think about the cost that it takes to be a parent the cost in time the cost and finances and i would encourage you to wait until youre married before you have kids wait until you know youve got that 2nd parent that 2nd income that can help you raise that child what kills me is when i see a kid with all the academics to rock it you know they get these all lazy finally they finally break this Glass Ceiling where they put all this hard work in their academics and then they get pregnant with their with their High School Sweetheart and i think literally just take 3 steps back and i think its because theres this. Intelligence we just dont talk about like relationship and the strategy around what you do as an emotional being. Always been a daddys girl i would go to him for everything and when i got pregnant he distance and stuff along he had different views than i did when i told him i was going to keep matthew. Youre going to keep. Going to keep you like he saw me completely. I had matthew on april 26th. I called a month later to see how he was doing. To catch up to see if he wanted to see my son he calls me. I still cant believe you decided to keep them you could have had a future now youre not going to have anything. And its been built 3 years. And i havent heard from what ive heard from people one of my teachers actually. When i wasnt there and everyone from the class told me she said if wendy was my daughter. I would take the baby away from her raise it myself sure but now shes not going to amount to anything. And hearing it from my dad now. And saying youre not going to announce anything youre not going to have a future anymore because i decided to keep my son. Broke me. And we as a society have lied to you in this weve been dishonest. Because what we have said. Is that you can behave any way that you choose you can make any decision or choice that you want to make whatever you feel this this day you can make those kinds of decisions and we will do the best that we can to alleviate the cons. But the fact is we cannot alleviate the consequences it is true that you make your own decisions you can choose any of these paths that you want to choose but we are being dishonest to you when we say we can help you avoid consequences there are consequences for the choices that you know having sex outside of marriage is not going to fill the void that youre trying to fill it only creates more and more of a vast open and. Within you because you are opening yourself in the most mourner of all way to another human being who is in no way committed and his whose actions are really out of selfishness likely and a desire to meet a need. That day. In the day i had on i started getting ready i started getting pain and then by the time i got there they told me it was too late for me to have it. Im just bawling my eyes out i was like i dont know what to do ive never done this and whenever he got there. I was scared the 1st time i change just. Like i care to change the diaper he looked and what do you mean you cant just type of like i cant do this i am fix tina i can do this i cannot. I cannot do school work and raise a child. Precious little boy mile at me and im thinking i cant do this at all the only thing going through my head was i cannot do that. If you find yourself pregnant at 15 there is no easy option for you you can choose to have an abortion and that is not an easy option it leaves damage for the rest of your life for you and for your family. Having a child at 15 leeds all kinds of issues because now youre not just a Typical High School kid your response will for another human be youre going to have to find a way to bring in candy youre going to have to tend to a sick baby in the middle of the night when you have homework and you have to get up early and go to class yourself and then your other option would be to place your baby for adoption which is the most difficult decision ive ever seen a young person it is a wonderful choice and it is often the best choice for that child but it is heart wrenching and extremely difficult so once you find yourself in an unplanned pregnancy we cant take away those consequences and you now have very difficult decisions to make. So i have no other. The betting line i have met but. About to be still in it but i wake up at 6 in the morning at around 7 i will wake up my little brother and at around 720 i will get back there ready ill drop him off at my sisters at 730 take my little brother this class im 30 i get the school and im racing im running rushing to get there i get out of school at 130 and i was going to work at 2 i get off or i have some i get this out i play with matthew for the 30 minutes but i have and then i go to work and whenever i get my 30 minute lunch break do the same thing go to my sisters house and spend time with then go back and then i get up before for online i want to put them both ways after i put them up please i will start working on my homework at around 1030 and i usually call feel better about we wanted. To i think israel has. Genuinely and to some extent in a manipulative way. Feared any strong state in the region and iran in that sense is a psycho political career. More than that i think immaterial breath but its you with the material carette is used to manipulate in part the israeli public which is very divided now and they need symbols of unity and one of them is. The iran threat. The world is driven by dreamers shaped by one person at the end. The day. Thinks. We dare to ask. Always be polite never engage with a negative a good or confrontational also. Dont get into any conversation or start answering questions just ask for an attorney. To survive in the territories. Definitely dont want to go in the jumpsuit one coach. Youre more likely to walk free if youre rich. Or if youre poor and. Youve got 2 eyes and ears in one now. So you should be seen in here and a whole lot more than youre saying if you dont take that advice easy going to dig yourself a hole. So what weve got to do is identify the threats that we have its Crazy Foundation let it be an arms race is often very Dramatic Development only mostly im going to resist i dont see how that strategy will be successful very critical of time to sit down and talk. So what i would say to a 15 year old is. I apologize that you have convinced me. That you are incapable of because i dont know the. And those things and i. Believe that you have a purpose i believe that greatness is only. Believe that you bring value into other peoples lives and bring value into the lot of this child if you choose to hear that its not going to do things and we have failed and it is now our job to come along in support to enable you to make better choices go. My mama watch the 1st. Tell their. Thank you mom i love. And. Love differently. You want to show her love by watching him. Taking care of me making sure how to look for my head. She told me for the 1st time i know i never tell you this often but im so proud of you. You are working. For me to get a message saying im proud of you and everything. Everything that. Was the best. This is what i have been working. For im proud of. Theres a group of villagers are river when someone in the group noticed a baby floating down the street. One of the men rushed into the water rescued the baby and brought it to sure but before he could recover a number of babies were trying floating downstream. Theres a steady flow of b. B. C. Floating down the river and the whole village was involved in the rescue efforts pulling babies out of the water and making sure they were made safe but not all of them could be. Some are pulled under by the ranging river whether slipped through the villagers hands while others fell back into the water as the villagers tried to save them. The villagers were saving as many babies is they could but before long they became exhausted from all their effort. Frustrated controversy erupted milledge one group argued that every possible hand was needed downstream to help rescue the babies they didnt have everyones help they would lose too many downstream. The other group argued that every possible hand was needed upstream to get find out how the babies were getting into the water to save all of them in a limb an 8 the need for the costly and time consuming efforts downstream. To find out how these babies are falling into the river in the 1st place we can stop this and no more babies will drown if we go upstream we can eliminate the cause of the problem. But its too risky some said might fail or take too long to lose too many lives. Away to the ones weve lost and our future children to fix the problem upstream and save one else calling them to get. A drink from a separate water fountain Houston Texas well how much. But whats different about the water. Coming out of it found. The comparison. Of the mountain that was of the posts. That go up i realize most. People feel completely. All that life. Plaistow around them. When you. You know there are 2 ways to address poverty one is to try to prevent it from ever occurring in the 1st place and the 2nd is if it does occur to a 1000000 right you know provide people with assistance with child 8 care with alfie who has to be but has to be. You have to help those who are in need now and you have to help those might be huge and in order to do both you have to not only work downstream you have to call the circumstances that got us where we are. And so our approach to every person and every family and poverty needs to be is unique as that person and that family and thats difficult to do and its a little overwhelming to think about but people are different its interesting looking back historically on what weve done to address poverty in the United States its mostly been to provide people with assistance of various kinds and those things are needed i think we should not leave people destitute and without such assistance bob theres not a lot of evidence that those things are going to move people out of poverty except temporarily i dont think americans are in favor of simply redistributing income what they want is to provide everyone an opportunity to get ahead on their own we believe in equality of opportune. Not equality of results. I went to a conference once the conference was an opportunity conference where we invited 74 families from our community and hopes to just allow a pathway to cycle out of poverty majority of the people in this conference were generational poverty so they came in and they heard from dr beagle are her story and were encouraged to mrs 6 hour program and she would say how many of you know what it is to have a disconnect notice how many of you know what it is to receive an eviction notice and before long arms were coming up and she allowed them to see that if i can do it you can too we all have hope with this sometimes just gets buried so i had the opportunity to visibly see hope rise to the surface of 74 people and thats not something that you can contain we knew you cant contain hope i left this place with hope and im going to tell everybody about it i want them to know what i know and im going to succeed because people came in the room they didnt know me and i matter i wasnt born. I am hard. Right im no longer in this isolation where im irrelevant or i have to walk around and lead with this label of shame little by little the hope starts to take that label off and when people come into place youre able to replace that label with words of worth instead of allowing that person to feel. We all are the same when it comes to what our basic needs are and what our basic desires are and i think if we really think about what we have in common with one another thats where we can start to create a basis. Understanding a person saying im not going to judge you im not going to criticize you im not going to devalue your lived experience because its different than my you say to the other human being what ever. Dream youve ever had is still. When i was growing up. Felt like there were a few kids that were completely off. And there were a few kids that were trying really hard to make good choices and really had their focus at where it needed to be but most of us are somewhere in this gray area where were trying to get our toes as close to the line as we can without completely stepping over but we werent really convicted either way were just all kind of trying to get good at. What i see now is that there are more kids off the rails. There are very few kids in this very area. But there are a lot of young people who are committed who are strong who are focused who want to make good. And who are making an impact on the people around. That is my hope for the next generation. And that hope comes from the stories that we tell that hope comes from us saying to our scholars you can do this were going to stand by were going to help you get through this day after the power to turn the ship and it happens make good decisions after that. One of the bigger and. Actually realize the things you do from 14 to 24 hour compound interest of things that like were going to take you to places that you cant even understand what you do today is going to play more compound interest that anything else youre playing a game thats bigger than yourself youre playing a game for yourself or your familys name or your kids that dont even exist yet for your grandkids who are going to benefit off of the hard work you put into that. Not all poverty is preventable but we know certainly that based on research and the research that were using for our programs some of that can be preventable we want to help them we want to help the Community Around us nats what were trying to rally our Community Around and support a lot of times when i work with people who currently live in the crisis of poverty else who are not smart enough to get a skill not smart enough to go to college to ask for help you got to ask for help in poverty issue dont ask for help. Thats the wrong message. Nobody makes it alone absolutely no one we have to Work Together we have to overlap with other organizations we have to be community is the key is allowing hope but we cant allow hope we cant communicate we cant allow worth until theres relationship if we can spark a movement that not only helps those who are in the river but also gives them the tools to help their kids and their kids kids not be in the river thats the movement we want only reach out to people across. These barriers of poverty barriers of political opinions. We can really find some unique treasures in people who are different from months and find out that theyre not so different after all. Imagine picking up a future textbook on the early years of the 21st century what are the chapters called Gun Violence School shootings homelessness 1st it was my job it was my family bill it was my savings i have nothing i have nothing and its not like i dont try i look for resources i look for jobs i look for everything i can to make this pass. In the aisle of doing is. The road to the American Dream paved with