Angela's Bus Ride Home Essay

For the final project of this course, I decided to create a children's story book on the website "storyjumper" that depicts the issue of youth homelessness titled "Angela's Bus Ride Home." This story is about a girl named Angela who comes from a middle-class family that consists of her father, Bob, and mother, Emily, and is the only child, so she is very privileged. She is a middle schooler as she is in grade 7 and is very outgoing and liked by everyone in her class. She is a social butterfly and talks to everyone, except for one person. There is one outcast in the class, that is a boy named Justin, who is known to eat people's food, and steal items such as extra clothes and school supplies from others' bags when unattended, and always manages

to get away with it from teachers. One day he steals from her best friend, Stella during lunch, and this is when Angela decides to talk to him and ask him why he does what he does, so she asks to sit beside him on the bus ride home from school. On this bus ride, she finds out that Justin is a gay homeless youth who was kicked out of his home because his parents were not accepting of his sexuality and is forced to stay in a shelter. She also finds out more about what youth homelessness is, impacts of it on Justin's wellbeing, reasons why youth become homeless, the stereotype that only certain people and groups can be homeless, and human rights that youth, in particular are entitled to the most. She invites him over for dinner and to stay at her house whenever he wants and also gives him basic necessities, so he is better off, and they become friends. And as good friends do, she helps him even further by preparing a care package with the help of the school to give to him and his shelter. In the end, they go on a field trip around the city, and to the shelter to learn more about homelessness as a general issue and learn policies that would make this issue more preventable.
This story targets children who are not homeless and are in school in North America between the ages of 7-15 as the story is most relatable, understandable, and crucial towards this group. I intended this because this is the age group in which important aspects of primary socialization take place these children are now adolescents. Whether it is through teachers, friends, or classmates, it is in school in which we learn and acquire fundamental skills that give us the opportunity to better ourselves by gaining knowledge and skills on how to become functioning members in society. This is also when children begin to form an identity as they continue to physically and mentally grow and evolve into the adults they are meant to become. During this process, bonds are formed and broken for a variety of reasons, one of them being misconceptions and stereotypes. One's family, school, media, etc. all influence what they believer and how they act, and this is when friend groups become more secure, and people are excluded. The individuals who experience this seclusion can become outcasts and their socialization processes' can become altered, and this can have negative impacts, similar to Justin. Although he was being deviant and that gave the rest of his class a reason to not like or talk to him, that loneliness and feelings of everyone hating him reinforced his depression, so much so, that he considered dropping out of school even though he knows that acquiring a proper education is one step closer for him to get out of his current life conditions as it can increase the opportunity for him to get a job.
As stated in the story, adolescence is a period in which "youth need a strong support system and a feeling of hopefulness to face the complex and often troubling developmental tasks of creating a stable identity and becoming productive and autonomous adults" (Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2010).

This being said, I thought that this would be a suitable audience for my book because they are the most capable of being influenced and a message like this needs to be exposed to them. The story takes place in a setting that these adolescents are familiar with, has characters such as Angela or even Justin, that are relatable. A lot of people are quite extroverted or have similar personality traits like Angela, such as caring, sympathetic, and courageous, and have the same or similar living conditions as her as well, and others may have personality traits similar to Justin such as introverted and innocent, and some may even relate to him being gay or even being homeless. In fact, "youth homelessness is an urgent issue given that approximately 20% of all Canadians experiencing homelessness are between the ages of 13 and 24. This means that over the course of the year there are 35-40,000 young people who experience homelessness, and on any given night at least 6,000. There are no indications that these numbers are declining. To tackle the problem, we must begin by recognizing that youth homelessness is distinct from adult homelessness in terms of its causes and solutions" (Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, 2016). There are way more homeless youth than people think there are, which is why I wrote about this issue specifically. As stated in the quote, if we distinguish adult and youth homelessness and the youth becomes more aware of the issues that they could one day experience or even know someone who experiences them, we are one step closer to

change.