More Examples of Public Health Problems

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1. 1) Mary is the author of this text. She graduated from college with a degree in computer science and used to have a job as a substitute teacher. She one day aspires of teaching a kindergarten class. However, for now Mary is dealing with being homeless and living on the streets. This text is about her story and her experiences on the streets of New York City. Her goal when writing this text was to use her experiences to comment on the stereotypes and behavior directed towards homeless people. This is a subject very personal and important to her because it is about her life and personal struggles that she hope will bring attention to an even bigger cause. Although she only talks bout what she has gone through, she attempts to call awareness to the struggles of all homeless people and point that the actions of community members have a huge impact on them. She wants to also make people aware that the stereotype about all homeless people being addicts and prostitutes is hugely untrue and insulting. The audience if for anyone willing to listen to educate them on the problems. It is for anyone who upon reading it, will reflect on their own life, and might decide to be more courteous to another person or stop making assumptions about a stranger. She writes this text in first person because it her real life account and makes it more personalized, thought provoking and emotionally drawing. In the text she even says “I try to explain by example that there are good, decent, employable but destitute people in New York City.”
   2) She mainly uses her first had experiences to prove that there is a real problem with how homeless people are treated and thought about. She does draw in one statistic on homeless people, “30-40% of the street homeless population suffered from a mental illness, including alcoholism and drug addiction.” She than chose to ignore how negative that fact was a spun it in a more positive light. Immediately after stating that fact, she pointed out that it also was saying that “you can also infer from this survey that 60-70% of the street homeless are not mentally ill, drug addicted or alcoholic.”

   http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/13/homeless-nyc-people-you-meet

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