Helping Youth Homelessness
With great conviction and courage, Charlotte Smith revitalized her life from foster care and life on the streets and is now helping others to do the same. Charlotte shared her lived life experience of sexual assault from a young age, mental health issues, poor foster care, life on the streets, drug addiction... a seemingly hopeless, homeless situation.
But Charlotte was able to rise up and create hope. She leveraged the few helping hands available to her into a job, surmounting addictions and earning a post-secondary education. Throughout this journey she has been active in creating awareness and defending the rights of the homeless.
Someone who has benefitted from Charlotte's help is Avery Taylor, a young woman with her own lived experience of mental health, trauma and homelessness. Avery now works with Charlotte to help others gain the benefits and support of LivEx Alliance.
LiveEx Alliance was founded to provide an approach that she felt was missing. It is a peer group to support marginalized youth where there is a focus on equine-centered learning and healing. Not only are the horses a calming influence (physically, mentally and spiritually), but Charlotte maintains much can be learned from observing their social interactions and behaviours.
There are structural, systemic, individual and relational factors influencing homelessness. Many current programs don't fully appreciate the structural and systemic aspects. Solutions benefit from a wholistic approach; it's more than a housing issue: job and life skills, mental health support, counseling and mentoring programs...
In their very well-structured and impactful presentation, Charlotte and Avery outlined the need, objectives and plan for the LivEx Alliance to connect more homeless youth with life skills training, mentoring and opportunities they deserve.