Homeless Shelter Interview Essay

This past year, like millions of Americans, I developed an extreme interest in going to Canada. So when a service opportunity crossed my search engine, I immediately registered to have the chance to serve in Vancouver, BC. The website explained that we would be serving at a homeless shelter, but when I arrived in Vancouver, I realized that description was not exactly accurate.
In Vancouver, they have shelters where people who are addicted to drugs can come and live there safely. The apartment-like shelters provide the tenants with clean syringes, safe medications, and secure drugs in hopes that the tenants will use the drugs safely and eventually use them less. When they first explained to us this process, I was thoroughly confused. They basically

We cleaned up weeds in the garden, drained the pool, and did other cleaning tasks. Then for lunch, we went to the park in the middle of downtown eastside. While we were there, we got to meet a woman who told us her story. Her name was Michelle and as a young girl she grew up in an abusive family who at age 13, force fed her drugs. She became addicted within the first year of taking drugs, which was all before her first year of high school. As I listened to her story of how she is almost 50 now and still in the streets, I could not help but realize how lucky I am. I have grown up in an environment where it is easy for me to choose whether or not I should do drugs, or focus on school, or hang out with a certain crowd. I have parents who expect highly of me and provide me with the assistance I need to do well. Even one of the volunteers with me said, “After hearing her, I feel like the only reason I have not done crack is because it has never been in front of me.” Listening to him say that, I realize how easy it is to judge people who are on a path that is so obviously harmful. When I was doing work at the shelter, I was wondering why people would let drugs destroy their life. The reality is, some of them, many of them, were not as lucky enough to know that what they were doing was destructive. Many of them did not even choose to follow this path, they were forced, or it was their only path they