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Meet Virginia Siewert! author of People Like Us

October 22, 2014 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

People Like Us

People Like Us: Facts and Stories About the Homeless

From Amazon.com

Meet the homeless I’ve known. Learn of their circumstances and what they say about themselves. They have struggled against tremendous odds. It might surprise you that some are educated, talented, and have a sense of humor. Others escape entrapments, repeated mistakes, and holding grudges to find “family” at a shelter. One young man wrote his story, “Half a World Away,” when encouraged at a shelter. Meet heroic homeless persons who care for others, their families, and children. They come to a shelter seeking help until they can move into transitional housing, get jobs, and perhaps even marry.
Read about the facts of homelessness in our nation from its inception, the results of a worldwide survey of the homeless in countries rich and poor, and of biannual national counts of the homeless mandated by HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development).

Reviews

These are the people you never see or the ones you avert your eyes from. Ginnie Siewert will help you understand who they are and how they became our homeless. –Norma Watkins, author of the award-winning memoir The Last Resort

Always interested in people, always reaching out to assist those in need, Ginnie Siewert has written an easy-to-read account of how it is to live without shelter. Like her, the book is insightful, compassionate, humorous, and inspiring. Through firsthand experiences with people who are so often forgotten or ignored, Ginnie reminds us that they are really just people like us. –Kathleen Cameron, advocate for the unsheltered; author of The Chicken Without A Coop

Rev. Siewert has a real heart and passion for the homeless, which is apparent in this book. There are good facts to ponder and meaningful stories about homeless persons throughout. A fine piece of work regarding God’s justice for the poor. –Rev. A. Daniel Fowler, First Presbyterian Church, Fort Bragg, California

About the Author

People Like Us: Facts and Stories About the Homeless author Virginia Lee Siewert wanted to be a minister when women had few options. After attending Park College in Parkville, Missouri, she chose summer service jobs as a psychiatric aide and worked with migrants in Oregon. While teaching at an interracial junior high school in Oakland, California, she married and had two children. When women could be ordained, she went to seminary and later trained as a chaplain. During an early job as a hospital chaplain, she met her first transient, a victim of LSD overdose.

After they retired, Virginia and her husband moved to a town in California where she met homeless people and learned of their problems and struggles. Serving on a board of directors at a shelter, and writing anonymous stories of the homeless in a community college writing class, the positive reaction of the professor and fellow students motivated her to write this book, in hopes that it might remove some of the stigma against people who struggle with the kinds of problems that any of us could have to face.

Details

Date:
October 22, 2014
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Event Category:

Organizer

Fort Bragg Library
Phone
707-964-2020
View Organizer Website

Venue

Fort Bragg Library
499 E Laurel St
Fort Bragg, CA United States
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Phone
707-964-2020