The solution was obvious: hire the young people to rebuild the building to provide homes for the homeless and at the same time to get back on track to rebuild their own lives.” As she said, “In our community we had hundreds of abandoned buildings, thousands of idle young people, and many homeless people. Stoneman spent years operating day care centers, community-based schools, and youth programs in East Harlem before she decided, in 1978, to launch a program for young people to build a network of positive peer support to take charge of their lives, succeed in school, and work to improve their communities by building affordable housing for their neighbors.
Too many slip into drug abuse, are pressured to join gangs, or suffer homelessness. Too many abandon school or are kicked out or have to leave to help support their families. Too many young people are born into this chaos, through no fault of their own.
Dorothy Stoneman knows that solving algebra word problems, concentrating on fiction and poetry, writing English compositions, and memorizing the periodic table and the laws of thermodynamics become impossible in the pain and chaos that occupies households that lack enough food or beds, that may have only one parent who has to work night and day to support the family, or where one or more adults may be gang members, drug addicts or dealers where there may be no reliable daily routine, and nobody available to help with homework or other needs where a parent or sibling may be in jail, an older brother murdered in the streets, or gang members have riddled the house with bullets.
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