PLATFORM : ‘We Are It’

There are too many children coming to school with their basic needs of food and shelter barely being met. So they come to school and they aren’t ready to learn.

(Counseling is) extremely important because these children are living in an area where death occurs frequently. They encounter it daily, and they don’t have appropriate outlets. We are it. The population we are dealing with does not have the resources available to get help. We have agencies we refer them out to, but those agencies are overcrowded as well. We’re the first step in helping these children.

The teacher who is already overwhelmed with work will now have to deal with situations like, for example, a child with suspected abuse at home. However, without the support people helping (teachers), these crisis intervention types of things may not get done. We’re basically working on a skeleton crew as it is.