17. Out of the Shelter: How One Homeless Teenage Mother Built a Life of Her Own

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/out-of-the-shelter-how-one-homeless-teenage-mother-built-a-life-of-her-own/265110/

In the article, "Out of the Shelter: How One Homeless Teenage Mother Built a Life of Her Own," Kevin Ryan, the president and CEO of Covenant House International, and Tina Kelley, a former New York Times reporter, conveys the story of a young girl working her way up in life across many difficult circumstances. The article starts off by involving the reader in a hypothetical situation similar to the girl in the article, providing statistics of "nearly 750,000 American teenage girls..., a third of them under 18 and almost 90 percent unmarried" who gets pregnant and decides to have the baby. From these young girls, those who are alone are faced with the impossible calculations requiring to work 20 hours a day just to earn enough to afford a  small apartment, putting aside the problem of finding a childcare which "costs more than a year in a state college" in a year. Creionna, in addition to such extreme challenges, was faced with the remains of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Her mother died when she was two and her father was soon arrested for selling drugs, leaving her to her grandmother. After the hurricane, she came to live with her aunt whose house was "a base camp for various relatives with drug problems." There, she met a young man next door named Rashad and she became "with child." She spent her time of pregnancy in great hardship without any support from her family members of Rashad and was later left without a home to return to. Even through all the difficulties, she found aid from the Covenant House and managed to graduate high school, get accepted to Southern University, Shreveport--she was "heading from homelessness to higher education in eight months." Creionna has got a job at a health clinic affiliated with Tulane and lives with her three-year-old son in a small, simple and hopeful home of her own.

Kevin Ryan and Tina Kelley presents this article in acknowledgement of Creionna's persistency and courage to get off the streets and go to college even with a child and many obstacles. Their purpose also aims to encourage any readers to regain confidence of achieving their goals, because Creionna did it even through all the imaginable difficulties. The article especially stands as another inspiring, hopeful story to young people faced with troubles, seemingly blocking them from becoming the adults they hope to be.