Unbelieveable!!! Is Anyone Else Watching 20/20 Tonight?

Is anyone else watching tonight's 20/20 story about life in Appalachia? Being born and raised in Guelph Ontario, and still living right here, 27 years later, it's blowing my mind! My husband, on the other hand, is sitting next to me nodding his head, and letting me know that he's seen it all. The poverty I'm seeing is to me, unbelieveable, yet nothing new to Walker. While extremely educated, because of where he has lived in the past, and because of the people he knew.

On the one hand, people do unbelieveable things to survive, on the other hand, the total lack of EDUCATION (not just formal education but education in general) only serves to enable certain problems to continue.

Across the street from my little apartment is an oasis for the city's homeless. When I first heard the news that the "Welcome-In" drop in centre was moving from it's building in a rather seedy part of downtown Guelph to the big former bakery right across the street from my relatively safe apartment, I WANTED to hit the roof. Instead I decided to go to the town meeting, and see for myself, what they planned to do.

I LIKED WHAT I HEARD!

They totally fixed up the organization, and made it much more reputable. Instead of just a place for the stereotypical welfare cases to go and bum a meal, it became a place for the disadvantaged to gain some advantages. Now instead of being a shack of a building with a few tables, where the homeless can get a meal and go back on the street, it's become a place where the less fortunate can come in, eat, wash their clothes and themselves, use the library and computers to better educate themselves, and look for work, and go back into the world with options.