A way of expression people ask me what motivates me every day and i look im just being me i started my company because it was an expression of myself i am just painting on a canvas but i think if we can teach them that think of their work and their life as a place to express themselves and then dream what they see themselves becoming having that strategic mistake makes you think more long term rather than the short term want athletes are told to picture making the shot before they take the shot and i think that the same thing is true for the rest of us we have to picture what our goal is is looking like and not just pick an arbitrary goal but what do we want our life to look like and then create a plan to get there and we can help kids do better but its in their own hands its in their hands thats a lesson every kid should learn and those sort of step the responsibility i can make sure that i never will be poverty and my kids in the role of the bar weak if i do the right thing. Oh my names wendy im 18 years old i go to caprica high school and i am a senior this year there was 8 over still live together there is a 3 bedroom house there was a lot of trouble. When the economy hit and everything my parents both they both had lost their jobs it was kind of hard for us to even like cat food all my life even now im still on free and reduced lunch so now. I have free with my little brother house free and reduced lunch and there was 5 of. My sophomore year i was 15. I was on a journey with our p. C. And coming back slowly nauseous from there is a started noticing that i was feeling different. So i carry a theyre believing are you pregnant and like i dont think im believe like i eat all the time like while i watch a pregnancy test and i was like what is a kind of like better and so theres a pregnancy test that came out positive and just kind of frightening so 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. With my going to finish school how am i going to do any of the set all. Just. Terrified out of my mind. It turns out in the u. S. Right now as an awful lot of children are being born to parents and parents who are not married to each other that is about 50 percent of the birth 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. With kids who are single parent. Generally education. They all. And. Then kids who come from there a couple. More of our kids were with their married parents and lived for their whole childhood with their married parents that also could make a huge difference theyll do better in school will be more likely to college and even though they might compositions magically over the last 3 or 4 decades more kids arent still families who are kids who are both their parents i think americans are going to figure this out Single Parents alone have high stress levels stigma comes against them because theyre Single Parents. Says teenagers we have these adult so we feel like were adults but were were very malleable in the sense that were still children in a way our emotions go up and down and happens is though many kids are making these very tough decisions around friends and peer groups and theyre making a lot of decisions around relationships and who their phones love with their intimacy with those people and its just this kind of like these tough things like what really a lot of kids in poverty. I never thought i would. Ever play because i was i am i feel as a standing that i do so much charity work so Much Community service or everyone at school is like when 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 it happened once here keep going with 5. And a half. And know what you see the picture and blow your whole world just. Turned upside down. And when we talk about idea of participating in risky behavior whether were talking about having sex doing drugs drinking watching pornography whatever it is getting involved in social media. 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 and 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 think literally just take 3 steps back and i think its because theres this e. Q. Emotional intelligence where 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 i got pregnant and 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. 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 him. I start he calls me. Hes 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 built 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 for sure but now shes not going to amount to anything. And hearing it from my dad now. And saying youre not going to bounce 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 in 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 cons. 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 we are being dishonest to you when we say we can help you avoid consequences there are consequences for the choices that you know 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. Debate within you because you are opening yourself in the most mourner of all way to another human being who is in no way committed to and his whose actions are really out of selfish. Yes unlikely and a desire to meet a need that day. The day i had started getting ready i started a campaign and then by the time i got there they told me it was too late for me to have it. Im just bawling my eyes out i was like i dont know what to do ive never done this and whenever he got there. I was scared the 1st time i change just. Like i care and change the diaper it looks and what do you mean you cant just type of like i can do this i am fix tina i can do this i cannot support him i cannot do school work and raise a child. Bearing at 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 made 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 night 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 i have. About 3 if you want to. Wake up at 6 in the morning around 5 am 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 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 i get up before i. Play with 30 minutes but i have and then i go to work and whenever i get my 30 minute lunch break do the same thing go to my fish health and spend time with then go back and then i get off of work around 9 i. Am. Working on my homework at around 1030 and i usually call for a better one of. 6 guys or financial survival. When customers go by you or do sometimes. Well reduce allow or. Thats undercutting not whats good for market its not good for the global economy. Imagine picking up a future textbook on the early years of the 21st century what are the chapters cold Gun Violence School shootings homelessness 1st it was my job it was my field bill it was my savings i have nothing i have nothing that is not true i look for resources i look for jobs i look for everything i can to make this house. Annoying the doing is. The road to the American Dream paved with good refugees its this very idealized image i want to america makes americans look at the cost of the deaths that happen every single day this is a history of the usa. So. This is. All of. Have. You are lazy. That you are incapable that you are selfish because i dont believe any of those things that i. Believe that you have purpose i believe that greatness is only. Believe that you bring value into other peoples lives into the law if you choose to hear that its not going to do this and we have failed to do and it is now. To enable you to make better choices for. My momma watch. How their. I love. And. Love differently. With my head. She told me for the 1st time i know i never tell you this often but im so proud of you. You are. Born. And everything. Everything that. Was. This is what i have. Im proud of. Theres a group of villagers working 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 too much one 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 think of 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. To 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. The way to the onesies was handle she says children to fix the problems upstream. One can only. Address from a separate water fountain and say well i found a lot. Ok but was different about the water. Coming out of that found. The path of. The mountain that i wasnt supposed to me. That grew up my real life most of the. People from completely. All that life. Placed around them. With 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 mill youre right you know provide people with assistance with child 8 care with als say it has to be but. You have to help those who are in need 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 circumstances that got us where we are. And so our approach to every person every stanley and poverty needs to be is unique as that person and 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 kinds and those things are needed i think we should not leave people destitute. Without such assistance. Theres 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 and what they want is to provide everyone an opportunity to get ahead on their we believe in equality of opportunity. 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 donna beagle 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 going. On i am hard. Right im no longer in this isolation where 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. Felt like there were a few kids that were completely off the list. And there were 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 were just all kind of trying to get by getting. 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 people around. 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 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 those who are not smart enough to get a skill not smart enough to get a 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 that we can allow hope we can communicate we can allow worth in television aleisha if we can spark a movement that not only helps those who are in the river but also gives them the tools to help their kids and their kids 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 and. We can really find some unique treasures in people who are different from others and find out that theyre not so different after all. For free from. Thank you. But still. It will. Take. You out of my. Little bit the. Only. One or youll. Need to. Make a film of the. Its a bill to ban filming police and increase the violence as the un warns the with possible with human rights pledges to rewrite it only ran close. To the 1st worlds 1st. Mass vaccination. And one of the most in line for russians to free. Nations those doctors on friday and the counter so. People who are sick hospitalizations and intensive care and needing long ventilators and i dont want to see this anymore becomes that your patience