Right thing. Oh my names wendy im 18 years old i go to camp Rock High School and i am a senior this year there was 8 of us dont live together there is a 3 bedroom house there was a lot of trouble when the economy had and everything my parents both they both had lost their jobs it was kind of hard for us to even my craft food in my life even now im still free and reduced lunch now. And when we watch my little brother has free and reduced lunch and there was 5 of us. My sophomore year i was 15. I was on a jail meet with 50 and coming back slowly nauseous from there into started noticing that i was feeling different. Sounds like youre either believing or youre pregnant and like i dont think im believing a like i need all the time is i like well ive watched a pregnancy test and i was like what is this kind of like that or and so like theres a pregnancy test that came out positive then just kind of frightening the my mom told me what any other parent would say to their kid. Youre going to be fine were going to get through this no matter what happens. What am i going to do how am i going to finish school how am i going to do any of us at all. Just. Terrified out of my mind. It turns out in the u. S. Right now an awful lot of children are being born to young parents and parents who are not married to each other and that is about 50 percent of the birth of the youngest generation in other words about half of the birth and the youngest generation are babies born outside of marriage to typically quite young parents we have normal over the years by doing careful study with kids who are single parent families generally education. Themselves. Or they also have. Kids who come from married couples. Its more of our kids were with their married current lives or their whole child with their worried parents that also quickly huge difference theyll do better in school. Will be more likely the college and even the family compositions magically over the last 4 decades. Are still families who are kids. So i think americans are going to figure this out Single Parents alone have high stress levels stigma because it gets them because theyre Single Parents. As teenagers we have these adult so we feel like were dont but were were very valuable in the sense that were still children who wait our emotions go up and down and. Kids are making these very tough decisions around friends and peer groups and theyre making a lot of decisions around relationships and who theyre falling in love with and their intimacy with those people and its just this kind of like these tough things like what really is a lot of kids in poverty. I never thought i would. Ever play because i was i am i still am training did i do so much charity work so Much Community service or everyone at school is like the spring is a shift mark. That she would get away from her family isnt she the church girl i never thought that would happen. You dont think from one night something. Is going to pop out 9 months later you just think oh i have it once here keep going with 5. And a half. And know what you see the picture in blue your whole world just. Turned upside down. And when we talk about participating in risky behavior whether were talking about having sex doing drugs drinking watching pornography whatever it is getting involved in social media and becoming really addicted to. Whatever device it is that youre using if were talking about any of those risks to be i think its important to consider. The outcomes of those that its important to consider that were not living for just this moment we have a child you know dont. Really think about the cost that it takes to be a parent the cost in time the cost in finances and i would encourage you to wait until youre married before you have kids wait until you know youve got that 2nd parent that 2nd income that can help you raise that child what kills me is when i see a kid with all the academics to rock it you know they get these all lazy finally they finally break this Glass Ceiling where they put all this hard work in their academics and then they get pregnant with their with their High School Sweetheart and i literally just take 3 steps back and i think its because theres a. Motional intelligence we just dont talk about like relationship and the strategy around what you do as an emotional being. Always been a daddys girl i would go to him for everything. And when i got pregnant he distanced himself along he had different views than i did when i told him i was going to keep matthew. Youre going to keep him well. Not going to keep you like he saw me completely. I had matthew on april 26th. I called a month later to see how he was doing. To catch up to see if he wanted to see my son he calls me. This like i still cant believe you decided to keep him you could have had a future now youre not going to have anything. And its been still 3 years. And i havent heard from what ive heard from people. One of my teachers actually. When i wasnt there and everyone from the class told me she said if wendy was my daughter i would take the baby away from her razor myself sure but now shes not going to amount to anything. And hearing it from my dad now. And saying youre not going to announce anything youre not going to have a future anymore because i decided to keep my son. Broke me. And we as a society have lied to you this weve been dishonest with because what we have said. Is that you can behave any way that you choose you can make any decision or choice that you want to make whatever you feel this this day you can make those kinds of decisions and we will do the best that we can to alleviate the consequence but the fact is we cannot alleviate the consequences it is true that you make your own decisions you can choose any of these paths that you want to choose but were being dishonest to you when we say we can help you avoid consequences there are consequences for the choices that you made having sex outside of marriage is not going to fill the void that youre trying to fill it only creates more and more of a vast open and deep within you because you are opening yourself in the most mourner a way to another human being who is in no way committed to and his whose actions are really out of selfishness unlikely and a desire to meet a need that day. The day i had him i started getting ready i started getting pain and then but when i got there they told me it was too late for me to get better im just bawling my eyes out like i dont know what to do ive never done this and. Whenever he. Was scared the 1st time i change just. Like i care to change the diaper it looks and what do you mean you can change diapers like i cant do this i am fix tina i can do this i cannot support him i cannot just call work and raise a child. This precious little boy mile at me and im thinking i cant do that at all the only thing going through my head it was i cannot do that. If you find yourself pregnant at 15 there is no easy option for you you can choose to have an abortion and that is not an easy option it leaves damage for the rest of your life for you and for your family. Having a child at 15 leeds all kinds of issues because now youre not just a Typical High School kid your response will for another human be youre going to have to find a way to bring in candy youre going to have to tend to a sick baby in the middle of the not when you have homework and you have to get up early and go to class yourself and then your other option would be to place your baby for adoption which is the most difficult decision ive ever seen a young person it is a wonderful choice and it is often the best choice for that child but it is heart wrenching and extremely difficult so once you find yourself in an unplanned pregnancy we cant take away those consequences and you now have very difficult decisions to me. So i have my little brother you know i. Will be about to be doing it for. A wake up at 6 in the morning around 5 and i will wake up my little brother and mother around 720 i will get matthew ready for my sisters at 730. Take my little brother to squat 730 i get the school im on racing im running rushing to get there i get out of school i want 30 and i going to work at 2 and get up before i pass by my sister i play with matthew for 30 minutes but i have and then i go and whenever i get my 30 minute lunch break do the same thing go to my fish and spend time with then go back and then i get off work around 9 i want to put them both after we are working on my homework at around 1030 and i usually call for a better one it. Is your media a reflection of reality. In a world transformed. What will make you feel safe. Isolation community. Are you going the right way or are you being led so. Direct. What is true what is faith. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Or a maybe in the shallows. Time after time corporations repeat the same mantra sustainability its very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport sustainability stay number may not be more equitable and sustainable well. They claim their production is completely hamas. It. Companies want us to feel good about buying their products while the demi. Just being far away this is just going to. Look. We do want to. Underscore this is going on. So what i would say to a 15 year old is. All of that would have convinced you. That you are lazy that you are and that you are incapable but you are still because i dont believe any of those things and i. Believe that you have a purpose i believe that greatness is only. Believe that you bring value into other peoples lives and youll bring value to the lot of this child if you choose to hear that its not going to do this and we have failed and it is now our job to come alongside of it in support to enable you to make better choices go. My mama watch matthew the 1st year that i had a mother. Thank you mom i love you i appreciate and. Love differently. You would show her love by watching him. Taking care of me making sure how to look for my head. She told me for the 1st time i know i never tell you this often but im so proud of you you have a baby you are working youre going to bore. Me that i was a. Woman. From me to get a message from her saying im proud of you and everything that youre good everything that strayed from me was the best. This is what i have been working. To get us. I cried. Theres a group of villagers working in the fields by river when someone in the group noticed a baby floating downstream. One of the men rushed into the water rescued the baby and brought it to shore before it could recover a number of babies were found floating downstream before long there was a steady flow of babies floating down the river and the whole village was involved in the rescue efforts pulling babies out of the water and making sure they were made safe but not all of them could be. Some are pulled under by the raging river whether slipped through the villagers hands while others fell back into the water as the villagers tried to save them. The villagers were saving as many babies as they could but before long they became exhausted from all their effort. Frustrated controversy erupted in the woods when a group argued that every possible hand was needed downstream to help rescue the babies they didnt have everyones help they would lose too many downstream. The other group argued that every possible hand was needed upstream to get find out how the babies were getting into the water they could save all of them and eliminate the need for the costly and time consuming efforts downstream. Find out how these babies are falling into the river in the 1st place we can stop this and no more babies will drown if we go upstream we can eliminate the cause of the problem. But its too risky some said might fail or take too long to lose too many lives. To the ones hes lost and our future children to fix the problems upstream is hazy on him calling to. Address it from a separate water fountains and say. Well. Ok that was different about the water. Coming out of that sound. In comparison. To the other mountain that i wasnt supposed to. Go up i realize most. People from complete. All that life. Based around. When the children you know there are 2 ways to address poverty one is to try to prevent it from ever occurring in the 1st place and the 2nd is if it does occur to a 1000000 right you know provide people with assistance with child care with out say that has to be but. You have to help those who are needy now and you have to help those. In the future and in order to do both you have to not only work downstream but you have to have the circumstances that got us where we are. And so our approach to every person every stanley and poverty needs to be as neat as that person in that family and thats difficult to do and its a little overwhelming to think about but people are different its interesting looking back historically on. What weve done to address poverty in the United States its mostly been to provide people with assistance of various cars and those things are needed i think we should not leave people destitute and without such assistance. There is not a lot of evidence that those things are going to move people out of poverty except temporarily i dont think americans are in favor of simply redistributing income what they want is to provide everyone an opportunity to get ahead on their own we believe in equality of opportunity not equality of results. I went to a conference once the conference was an opportunity conference where we invited 74 families from our community and hopes to just allow a pathway to cycle out of poverty majority of the people in this conference were a generational poverty so they came in and they heard from dr beagle on her story and were encouraged it was a 6 hour program and she would say how many of you know what it is to have a disconnect notice how many of you know what it is to receive an eviction notice and before long arms were coming up and she allowed them to see that if i can do it you can too we all have hope with this sometimes just gets buried so i had the opportunity to visibly see hope rise to the surface of 74 people and thats not something that you can contain we knew you cant contain hope i left this place with hope and im going to tell everybody about it i want them to know what i know and im going to succeed because people came in the room they didnt know me and i matter i wasnt born. I am hard. Right im no longer in this isolation. Im irrelevant or i have to walk around and lead with this label of shame little by little the hope starts to take that label off and when people come into place youre able to replace that label with words of worth instead of allowing that person to feel. We all are the same when it comes to what our basic needs are and what our basic desires are and i think if we really think about what we have in common with one another thats where we can start to create a basis of understanding a person saying im not going to judge you im not going to criticize you im not going to do you value your lived experience because its different than my you say to the other human being what ever. Dream youve ever had is still possible. When i was growing up. Belt like there were a few kids that were completely off the leash. And there are a few kids that were trying really hard to make good choices and really had their focus at where it needed to be but most of us are somewhere in this gray area where were trying to get our toes as close to the line as we can without completely stepping over but we werent really convicted either way we were just all kind of trying to get by. What i see now is that there are more kids off the rails. There are very few kids in this very area. But there are a lot of young people who are committed who are strong who are focused who want to make good decisions and who are making and having an impact on the p. That is my hope for the next generation. And that hope comes from the stories that we tell that hope comes from us saying to our scholars you can do this were going to stand by you were going to help you get through this they have the power to turn this ship away and it happens by making one good decision after that. One of the bigger you actually realize the things you do from 14 to 24 hour compound interest of things that like were going to take you to places that you cant even understand what you do today is going to play more compound interest that anything else youre playing a game thats bigger than yourself youre playing a game for yourself or your familys name or your kids that dont even exist yet for your grandkids who are going to benefit off of the hard work you put into that. Not all poverty is preventable but we know certainly that based on research and the research that were using for our programs some of that can be preventable we want to help them we want to help the Community Around us nats what were trying to rally our Community Around and support a lot of times when i work with people who currently live in the crisis of poverty theyll soon not smart enough to get a skill not smart enough to go to college to ask for help got to ask for help in poverty issue dont ask for help. Thats the wrong message. Nobody makes it alone absolutely no one we have to Work Together we have to overlap with other organizations we have to be community is the key is allowing hope but we cant allow hope we cant communicate we cant allow worth until the generations. If we meant that not only helps those who are in the river but also gives them the help their kids and their kids not be in the river thats the movement we want only reach out to people across. These barriers of poverty barriers of political opinion. We can really find some unique treasures in people who are different from us and find out that theyre not so different after all. Wall street financial engineers like love the crowds divert the money printing into their pockets at a rate that according to the Rand Corporation equals more than 50. 00 trillion dollars so that is your smoking gun thats why we have social unrest thats why we have incredible wealth and income gap thats why we have such a distorted economy thats why wages are not keeping up thats why weve got inflation raging thats your smoking gun and the story. Canas calendar is dark alfonzo any longer and theres changing to change guard serve the old guard. His 1st words were hello a senior a challenging post youve got 2 years to live. I have no doubt that what happened was criminal. Defense calls and trade market is a 1000000000. 00 industry these companies have huge financial motivations the saudis problems there are numerous stocks showing that doctors were keen tests factory concentrate straight insights of its own that patients wont give them doctors the wrong still quite a long term system and why they would give me consecutive doses day. And people still die i dont know which question or so i tried being allowed to live by so many have. Me. In the headlines this saturday 26 people are killed as a military plane crashes near a motorway in Eastern