In the wake of the sex abuse scandal that shocked its community, a somber yet reflective mood pervaded the campus of Penn State University.
It was the evening of Nov. 14, and Faces of Homelessness speakers’ bureau members had come to talk about homelessness.
Sheila Melvin, Alan Banks and I, along with Megan Hustings, our moderator from the National Coalition for the Homeless, were expecting a somewhat larger audience than the dozen or so people who showed up for our discussion at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center.
The center is located directly across from a library named for Joe Paterno, the school’s former head football coach, fired just four days before our arrival for not doing more to stop the alleged child abuse being carried out by his coaching assistant Jerry Sandusky.
Those who came that evening listened to our stories and learned about the mission of the speakers’ bureau and the advocacy work of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
The next day we spoke to a much larger audience at De- Sales University in Allentown. Several students shared their observations about homelessness that they gained while participating in the National Coalition’s Homeless Challenge, which gives students the chance to spend 48 hours on the streets of Washington, D.C.
I told one student that we had just spoken at Penn State, and he seemed ashamed and apologized to us for having to go there.
That last speaking engagement marked my 150th with the National Coalition for the Homeless speakers’ bureau. My work for the bureau has taken me all over the country over the past eight years and it has been enjoyable for me to enlighten people about poverty and homelessness.
