Cindy Perez-Nieto Capstone

For my senior year capstone I decided to collaborate with my peer, Natalie, to work on Homelessness. Throughout the year in the time we had we worked on finding out more information on what homelessness is and what is it that causes people to end in certain circumstances. We learned so much together and it turned us into young leaders.

Our first step as a team was to gather as much possible information that we could find. Our purpose was not just to give money to these people in need and call it a day. We wanted to educate ourselves into knowing what it is that brings the people of Philadelphia to these circumstances. In doing so we would be able to learn what is going on in our own city and what is it that needs to be done.

For us it got really complicated when it came to talking to shelters and big agencies that helped homelessness. Then came how to be able to fund for what was needed in these shelters to help care for these women. We had a very hard time communicating with these shelters since they are underfunded on staff but we were able to work with Women of Change which is a shelter that holds about 25 to 30 women and mostly help women get back on their feet. With more communication we were able to figure out what was it that these women really needed and not what we thought they needed.