A portion of the proceeds from our Anniversary Events will be going to Hope House which benefits homeless high school students in Myrtle Beach. You can read about them in an article on Carolina Weekly an in another article here.

Champions of hope

By Bo Bryan
For the Herald

Myrtle Beach—More than two hundred homeless children attend Myrtle Beach High School. Some live in tents at local campgrounds, abandoned by wandering parents. Some squat in abandoned buildings, without electricity, without running water. Some have after-school jobs, earning enough money to rent a room at a cheap motel. Others engage in a day-to-day search, “bumming nights” as they call it, from fellow students who have homes to go to.

“The kids take care of each other,” said Cookie Goings, chairman of the Guidance Department, with tears in her eyes. “These are among some of the best kids we have. They’re completely determined to get an education.”

Last year, five homeless teenagers graduated from Myrtle Beach High School. Four went on to college — three of them with full-ride scholarships.

“[Homeless] kids are ashamed of their condition,” said assistant principal Jane Roberts. “They might have two pairs of blue jeans, a couple of T-shirts and one pair of underwear. We have to be very careful in giving them anything, even a notebook or a pencil. They won’t admit their needs. It took a while to understand.”
At the beginning of each year, students fill out the “McKinney–Vento” form, telling where they reside. Anyone not living in a “permanent” residence is considered homeless and is therefore eligible for free breakfast and lunch at school.

“After school, [the homeless] go hungry,” Roberts said.
Teachers and administrators volunteer their own contributions. The school maintains a food locker and a clothes closet for donated items.

“The problem is,” Goings said, “you give a child a can of food, and he might not have electricity to heat it up.”

“Myrtle Beach is a transient community,” said high school principal, Nona Kerr. “Homeless kids are a bigger problem here than in other places. Families come to town in the summer, hoping to find work, and a lot of them do, but then the summer ends.

“Children sixteen and seventeen are left to their own devices, while parents travel on. In their junior and senior years, the kids are especially vulnerable. DSS won’t touch them. The parents don’t want to be parents, and the law won’t allow non-family members to take in a minor unless the child is legally emancipated, and that requires expensive court action. There are a lot of liability issues.”

Over Christmas, when school lets out for the holiday, homeless students will have to eat breakfast and lunch somewhere besides the school cafeteria. Teachers and administrators will contribute out of their own pockets, “instead of buying so many presents for each other,” said Goings. “We put in together and do for the kids what we can.”

“If other people want to help, I hate to say this,” Roberts suggested, “money is the best way.”
“The biggest problem we have is housing,” Goings said. “If we just had a place where the kids could be together.”

Goings has a dream: she calls it “Hope House,” a sort of dormitory for homeless students. She has broached the idea to city officials. Soon, Goings’ dream will have a second reading.

In the meantime, homeless children determined to educate themselves, will go on taking cold water sponge baths in public restrooms, not doing homework after dark because they squat in abandoned buildings without electricity, or pup tents without a flashlight. They’ll sleep scared and hungry in flea-bag motel rooms surrounded by the flotsam of adult humanity.

They’ll come in secret, embarrassed, alone, determined, “bumming nights,” smuggling themselves into homes, aided by children like mine, past unaware parents like me. The next morning, they’ll arrive in classrooms ravenous for knowledge to build a home of their own, be successful American dreamers. The odds against them defy calculation. Their endurance is astonishing. Their courage inspires you to wonder what might be done for them over the holiday.

If this story wrenches your gut as it does mine, maybe you’ll take half of the money you would have spent on Christmas junk and kick in with the champions of hope at Myrtle Beach High School. More than two hundred homeless children would secretly call you Santa Claus.