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The youth of First Friends Meeting went to Washington, D.C. to learn about hunger, homelessness and how to be active constituents. What they found in hooking up with the William Penn House organization, with a lot of help from Greg Woods, the program coordinator for the work camps, was an array of opportunities to work, learn and interact with people in situations they knew little to nothing about.

The following are from a journal kept by Sheila Hoyer, director of Christian education:

June 23

Today we went to the Creative Center for Non-Violence. This is thought to be the nation's largest homeless shelter and houses about 1,300 people a night. We learned several things from Mr. Burton who inducted us and prepared us for our work. It seems that often the police drop off people who have no where else to go in the vicinity of the center.

One story he told was of Ernie. Ernie was left outside in the cold but was not found by any staff for a long time. When they did find him they brought him out of the cold, fed him, and quickly realized Ernie was blind. Being a war veteran, he qualified for care that eventually restored his sight. Ernie now works at the shelter and even came in to say "hello" to us and share a bit more of his story, his love of the people who cared for him and his gratefulness that we had come to help out.

Our work was to clean out the emergency storage pantry. A huge room is devoted to housing food that will be used in case a disaster such as 9/11 were ever to occur again. It was quite a chore sorting the old food from the new. There were some challenges that involved rotted goods and insects so we felt very accomplished when we were finished with our work.

After our morning we walked to the Friends Committee on National Legislation building. This place was incredible! It is a certified green building and we learned a lot about how people can creatively take care of the earth in how they build and use energy.

My favorite was the light scoop. It brought light from the 3rd floor through special flooring and cut down on the need to use electric lights. We also learned about the organizations mission to lobby congress for issues relevant to Friends concerns. We learned ways that are effective to lobby and started thinking about how we might become more involved in our government as participants.

In the evening we went to the DC Central kitchen and peeled and chopped carrots for three hours. It sounds boring but we had a great time.

Photos from the trip

June 24

Today we met Ms. Jackson-she was great! We worked with the Capitol Hill Village People who were organized to help elderly folks do the things they need to do to stay in their homes on Capitol Hill. We arrive on a sunny morning with shovels in hand to meet up with their representative Ann, who helped us communicate with Ms. Jackson on what needed to be done. We cleaned out tree boxes, pulled weeds, pruned, trimmed, edged and mowed. In the end even we were impressed at the transformation of her overgrown yard.

The best part really was Ms. Jackson herself. She was right there in it with us working, telling us stories, giving us hugs and tearfully telling us how much she loved us.

That afternoon we continued on to the home of Janice. Janice lives with her deaf mother, her daughter and her grandkids in a home that needed some loving care. Janice stays busy by running a summer program where children do work to help them keep up in school and stay at their grade level. We went to help prepare the basement for new subflooring and finish some painting that another group had begun.

With our many hands we got the work done extraordinarily quickly. It was not long before we were waving goodbye and heading to the final activity of the day, a bike tour of the monuments.

June 25

This morning we prepped the group for a day at the Holocaust Museum. We provided some basic history and the content might be rough to take in. We also discussed that we remember our history so we will not turn a blind eye on atrocities that are happening in our world today, such as Darfur.

At the museum we spent several hours reading, learning, watching the movies and videos and being deeply struck by the piles of shoes left by those taken to camps. I looked over some walls to see TV's down below, built in such a way that small children could not easily view.

As I watched experiments that were done on innocent Jews, I glanced up to see one of my youngest charges watching the same thing. Her head was laid on her arm and her face was obviously solemn. I wished our world would never do such things and that our children did not need to learn about them in order to be part of preventing them.

In the evening we had two speakers. Amber and Alex taught us about hunger issues. We learned that one of two children were at risk for hunger everyday in Washington. We then met with Richard who had once been homeless himself. He was a veteran from Vietnam. He was a paratrooper and on one mission was shot four times. Eighty percent of his regiment was killed that mission.

Within 12 days he returned to continue. He began using alcohol for the stress. Alcohol evolved into marijuana and that evolved in other illegal options to cope. As his tour was coming to an end his little brother's was beginning. He did not want his little brother to be in that war and so he offered a deal to continue if it would keep his brother out.

When he came back he worked but post traumatic stress disorder set in. At a point he snapped and began living cardboard boxes and withdrawing from society. Later, he found his way out of the cycle and has been clean and sober for over 5 years. He now works with other vets to go down to the bridges and invite others onto a path of healing.

At the end of Wednesday we had a great deal to process.

June 26

Today we shucked our work clothes for something a little more appropriate to go see our congressmen Howard Coble and Brad Miller. Both representatives were very gracious in hosting us and our questions. We learned that groups often go into meetings like this with an 'ask.' We were learning to be constituents and lobbying might be in our future but for now we asked questions and listened.

That evening we returned to a project we had done earlier in the week. DC Central kitchen prepares meals and foods for various outreach programs around the city. On one evening we peeled and chopped carrots for three hours and on another evening we shucked corn.

We LOVED working here. We sang and danced to the kitchen's ever present mix of well known hits. The workers are all formerly homeless folk who have gone through training to work there. They we were fabulous at teaching us how to get the work done while having a good time and we all hope we can return there to help again.

Overall, it was an amazing week. The group was consistently hard working and engaged every opportunity with joy, care and compassion.

We are deeply grateful to William Penn House and to our various hosts and speakers for filling our every moment with information and work that will help us be people that can make the world a better place. One thing I will never forget is that we have so many opportunities and ways to get involved to help others and maybe more importantly-hard work can be so much fun.

Returning home, I am now wondering where my energy can be best used to take care of others and the many needs in our community.