It is undeniable how up-and-coming the city of Fort Worth is, from fun attractions like Billy Bob’s to the trendy restaurants on Magnolia Street, or the busy night life at West 7th. However, there is a lot about Fort Worth that goes unnoticed. The city of Fort Worth suffers from a serious problem of poverty and homelessness, which as of March 2016 it was recorded that 1,985 people were experiencing homelessness in Fort Worth. This astonishing and heartbreaking fact is so easily hidden by the unique and lovable Fort Worth. Yet, it is still something that persist and will continue to persist until something is done about it.
To see this issue firsthand, a few members of my sorority and I chose to serve this portion of the community to the best of our means for our National Day of Service. With our budget we were able to make and pack 60 lunch sacks with sandwiches, juice pouches, chips, a handwritten note, and cookies. We set out to seek homeless members of the community to provide them with a lunch for the day, but our journey didn’t take us further than Lancaster Avenue. We knew our supplies would not suffice but the reality of it was astonishing. Our cars, loaded with sacked lunches, were emptied within minutes of pulling off to the side of the road as people lined up outside the car to receive lunch. We were only able to provide for a pocket of people on the street before we had even driven a block down the road. Handing out these lunches and seeing the gratitude on the faces of these people made it even harder to drive away as we still had a considerable amount of the road to pass and all we wanted to do was give more.
The reality of this situation is that the problem is always bigger than one can imagine. Even if the “problem” resides within just one person, it will always be bigger because that is one person that is affected. One person whose life isn’t following their original design. One person who is hurting. But what is worse is that this issue is two-thousand people deep, two-thousand times the hurt, two-thousand times the hunger. This post isn’t about answers, because I am nowhere near qualified to give a solution, but it is about shedding a bit of light because awareness is the spark that can lead to a fire that can fuel change. Fort Worth is a place that TCU Students as well as its population rally together to make community, a community that has the potential to make a change, they only need to know which direction to target their efforts. As of right now, the flashlight is pointing towards Lancaster Avenue.
