Day 168 - homeless shelters

I went and had a tour of a homeless shelter for inner city kids, in Toronto yesterday. The way these places work, is that they offer a platform for kids in trouble to get harm reduction equipment, food, shelter, health and dental care, social service, daycare, employment help etc. with no questions asked. They don't need to provide a name, unless it's for health care, but even then they are allowed to use an alias. No ID required, no questions about where they're coming from, why they're here. These places are open non-discriminatory places for people who have only the streets to turn to. Being in such an environment really lets a person understand how much judgement, prejudice and unfairness we are all faced with on a daily basis. And you just have to be thankful that there are people willing to donate their time and energy in order to help make a troubled person's life just a bit better. I think it takes a lot to deal with these sort of things, because it's very easy to pass judgement and treat someone a little differently, we've been conditioned to do so socially and politically. But being in that building yesterday was very uplifting, and I'm just happy to see that there are people in this world that don't spend their days working for themselves, but for the benefit of people who already get ignored for the most part, by the rest of us.