Art4TheHomeless's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

When I was ten, my mother and I were living in White, GA in an abandoned trailor with no heat, electricity but we did have water when the pipes weren't frozen. It was right on my birthday that the landlord kicked us out and my mother just decided to drive until we ran out of gas money.

We ended up in Marshal, TX, where a church gave us gas money to get back to Shreveport, LA where there was a homeless shelter. That shelter was the Evergreen House. During our stay, the name changed to The Providence House and the staff made sure that our Christmas was special. In fact, the best Christmases of my childhood were in the shelter because of the kindness of so many people.

The reason I am writing this is because I want to encourage you to volunteer at a local shelter. You may never know the difference you could make in a child's Christmas. Today, the average age of a homeless American is nine years old which means that there are more families with children in shelters, on the streets, or in a situation where they have no home of their own. Many of these will be in shelters across the United States and around the world this Christmas.

Let's do something this year, everyone. Here is a link to a local shelter directory with a map for the US. Click on it and then your state and you can then narrow it down by city.

http://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/

Here is a link to a food bank locator if you would like to donate food or volunteer your time in helping out with food.

http://feedingamerica.org/default.aspx

If you are outside the U.S., which many of you (my lovely myspace friends) are, I encourage you to look up YOUR local shelters in your city and country. I have found a few links on Google, and here they are below:

Britain: http://www.ris.org.uk/
http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Society_and_Culture/Organisations/Homeless/

Switzerland: http://www.viavia.ch/

Canada: Ontario http://www.ottawamission.com/
Ontario http://www.nameres.org/

US and Canada Soup Kitchen Directory
(search by state or province)
http://4homeless.hypermart.net/soup_kitchens.html

Australia: http://www.homeless.org.au/

I am working on putting international links to The Homeless Network, which is a website that I created to help anyone in the US who is about to become homeless or already is homeless find out about shelters, food, medical care, info on homeless statistics, their rights--yes Homeless Americans do have rights you know--and the main objective of THN is to let you know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

You can see the current THN at http://thehomelessnetwork.tripod.com