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First Place 
First Place $1,000,000 over 12 months to support the capital campaign for a new facility and expand the education and health services for children and families who are homeless or in transition.
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"I live in a shelter right now. Me and my family just moved here to Seattle. We came from Michigan. We stayed with my uncle for a while. I’ve lived in California and Missouri, too. All the other kids here are in shelters, too, and it makes me feel OK that I’m not the only one that’s homeless, without a house. I know now we’re not the only ones. It helps me to feel safe. We talk about it during class. We gave speeches in Olympia (to the legislature) and a whole bunch of kids said that First Place helps us feel safe because we’re all in the same boat. What’s in the past is past, but here you can express it and talk about it, not just pass over what happened. "They help us to read and do math. The volunteers come in to help us with our math and stuff. Our teacher makes me feel good by saying how smart we are. My favorite subjects are P.E. and swimming and math. I’ve got good handwriting, but I don’t like writing much. I like to read adventure stories. They don’t yell at you if you make a mistake here. They teach us well. You have counseling here, and if we get in trouble they talk to us and make us feel good. "Kids without homes sometimes think, 'Why can’t I be like other people, why can’t I have a house? Why do we have to live in a shelter? Why can’t we have our old house back?' Kids feel scared; sometimes they cry even. But I don’t worry at First Place, 'cause the other kids don’t make fun of me. I used to go to another school and when I told them I lived in a shelter, the other kids said, 'Well, we can’t hang around you 'cause you live in a shelter. You can’t keep a house.' But my friend said, 'I don’t care if you’re in a shelter.' So she was my real friend. "The computers work good here. Everyday we go to the computer lab to do our reports. We looked on African Encarta for poems for women’s Black History month. All us girls did this. We looked up Maya Angelou, and I memorized her poem 'Woman’s Work.'"
"In 1989, there was a group of families living at a homeless center in Seattle, and they weren’t able to enroll their children in school because they had no permanent address. This has changed now, but at that time it was a barrier that homeless families faced. So a group of us began talking about the possibility of forming a school for homeless children. We opened First Place the following spring, and we became part of the Seattle School District’s plan for serving homeless families. Most of the families enrolled at First Place are living in shelters. Some are living on the streets, in cars, and in Tent City (an encampment of homeless people in Seattle). "I began looking at how to provide counseling to these kids, even if we only had them for a short time. I felt like there must be something we could do. So I began looking into play therapy. I started out with a suitcase of toys, and I found right away that children were able to get something therapeutic out of the experience. We have three counselors here now to work with the children, and they really look forward to their time with us. "Kids need an opportunity to play out, in therapy, what’s going on in their lives and to share that with a caring adult who can help them with that burden. Everyone in the family is trying hard to hold it together, and there is often not time or space for children to share what they are feeling. Children take a lot of responsibility for what’s going on in the family. They worry about whether their parents might have moved while they are at school or whether their mom is going to be in jail or abusing some kind of drug. They worry about their parents to a greater extent than most children would. "They’ve experienced so many losses, and they’ve rarely had the chance to express it. If they are able to play it out and share it in some way, it really lessens the burden for them. You can’t take it away. You can’t take away the problems that they’re dealing with. But if you can listen to them and be there, it makes a big difference in their lives."
Obsa attends First Place. He’s ten years old. He was born in Texas; his family immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia. In his words… "I really like this school. The people are nice. They give clothes away if you don’t have any. They care about you. I was kind of nervous on my first day here 'cause I didn’t know nobody. My mom, my brother, me—we’re all living in a shelter. If a new student came to this school, I would just show 'em around, and I’d tell the girls and boys to be nice. I’d say, 'Don’t make fun of her if she has a problem. Be friends with her.' See, we are all the same here, 'cause we all live in shelters. At other schools, they would tease you if they knew. But here, everyone lives in a shelter, so they can’t make fun of you. We get along here. I’ve been through shelters, no money sometimes, going to food banks—I’ve done all that. I’d tell a new student, 'Don’t worry; your mom’s getting help. They’re trying to get her housing. You’re safe at this school.' "Reading and math and science are my favorite subjects. I’ve read all the Harry Potter books. I want to learn how to dissect frogs. Here, they take things like math real serious. Our teacher doesn’t want us to mess around. She wants us to get smart and get ready for middle school. I appreciate that. We use computers in our class, and they call me Mr. X-Whiz. If the computers mess up, they all come to me to fix it. I like to go on the Internet to play games. I do research, too, like for International Women’s Day. All the women who fought for rights have their day that day. I do email, too. I email my friends if I’m going to their house, and we send messages like 'How’s it going at your house?' and 'What are you doing Saturday?' "The new school will give us more room, and I’m very thankful for that."
Rootlessness and poverty take a particular toll on children, who may not understand the real causes of their predicament. Like most children, homeless children relate the calamities around them to their own actions, and often blame themselves. The loss of home is often just one of many adversities they must contend with. Many children must bear adult responsibilities, caring for siblings and even parents, long before their time. For others, violence and drugs are part of their everyday landscape. School attendance, much less a quiet place to read and study, is problematic for children moving from place to place.
First Place recently purchased a new building and has begun renovation of an existing building—an old Jewish synagogue that is taking on new life. The school buildings, when they open in fall 2001, will be part of an envisioned community center that will house the school, a new library, community meeting rooms, and a parent job and resource center. Last year, First Place had to turn away 100 students for lack of space. The new buildings will enable the school to meet the needs of more children and to add grades 7 and 8. A library and a computer lab, with equipment and software provided by an earlier grant, will also be lodged in the new facilities. Staff and children alike have received extensive computer training under the program. |
