community change action

On a good day in December 1983, I cooked Vienna sausages and grits on a borrowed kerosene heater that—in my poverty-stricken state—felt like another mouth to feed. Every day I had to buy fuel for it.

I’d vowed to lift myself and two boys out of destitution as soon as I could, either by getting a job or returning to school. But a severe lack of resources, primarily childcare for my toddler, made it nearly impossible to envision either.