Homelessness And Poverty In Philadelphia: Agent of Change

This is my third blog post in a series of blog posts about homelessness and poverty in Philadelphia. You can look at the first post here, and the second post here.

For the Agent of Change portion of my You and The World Project, I volunteered at the People’s Emergency Center (PEC). The People’s Emergency Center is an organization which helps people, often women and children, who are homeless and who need help with things like getting a job, school work, or finding a place to stay. It provides housing as well as many different programs teaching children and adults valuable skills. When I got there, Tan Vu, Director of the Digital Inclusion Program met me. He gave me a quick tour of the facility after which he sat down with me and talked about what they did and what I would be interested in doing. One of the first things Mr. Vu talked about was the digital divide. He explained to me that many people are not able to get access to computers or internet. Since nowadays, computers are such a big part of our lives, it is hard for these people to get ahead. I always had a computer in my house. While it was not necessarily surprising to me, I really had not thought about how many people do not have computers in their own home. One of the programs they have at PEC is called Digital Inclusion. This program tries to break the divide. It tries to give people who cannot afford it, access to computers and internet. Children can participate in a ten week program in computers. After that, they get a free computer along with a Clear modem so they can connect to the internet. While I am volunteering at PEC, I will be refurbishing computers for people who finish the programs and get computers. I also perform maintenance. This whole experience, specifically the Agent of Change part of the project has impacted me greatly. I have enjoyed the work I have done at PEC as I get to help people and work with computers, both things I enjoy doing. One of the things Mr. Vu told me about was how hard it is to make sure children continue to use computers. I think that for people at SLA especially, the idea of NOT wanting to using a computer is strange. For so many people, computers have become an important part of our lives. I While I volunteered there, I was surprise how much I learned. I got to learn a lot about the inside of a computer. I got to see how to take out a hard drive or replace/add RAM. When we think of volunteering as a society, I think we generally think of strictly give. However, volunteering as I have experienced it has been both give and take. At some point during my experience at PEC, a little girl came into the room where I was working and said to one of the people who worked there “I will never forget”. It was unexpected but I thought it was really amazing. I got to see how volunteering really affects people. I just got there and had not done much but it helped motivate me. I saw how what I do can really make a big difference.