The Story About SPIRIT NYS
In 2020, John Thompson and Mary Thompson founded a non-profit organization – SPIRITNYS, that aids to prevent dropouts for home insecure teenagers in the city of Rochester.
The homeless students used to be labeled as “invisible millions” nationwide. In the city of Rochester, the high school graduation rate for homeless students is merely 40%. Thus, John and Mary Thompson, who had previous charity experiences for a similar organization called Youth On Their Own (YOTO) in Tucson, Arizona, where the high school graduation rate for homeless students has risen to 82-85% compared to the national average is 60%, decided to create a worthwhile opportunity in Rochester, similar to what YOTO has done in Tucson. “Rochester holds a special place in our hearts, as our hometown. We attended the local schools, and we want to see Rochester students thrive. Therefore in 2020, we established SPIRITNYS because we believe SPIRITNYS can improve the life trajectory of many high school students.” said John and Mary Thompson.
Although the statistics show the high school graduation rate for homeless students nationally is in an optimistic range, the total number of enrolled kids who have experienced homelessness at some point during the 2017-2019 school years has climbed to more than 1.5 million, according to new federal data provided by the National Center for Homeless Education. In addition, the number of students living wholly without shelter, such as in a car like Cara, has nearly doubled, from over 43,000 in 2015-16 to almost 103,000 in 2017-18.
When this comes to the local city – Rochester, during the 2018-2019 school year, approximately 10% of Rochester City School District students were homeless. This means nearly 1 out of every 10 New York public school students were homeless last year. To put that into perspective, consider that the average friend group size is around ten people. Each person will have one homeless friend for every ten friends he/she has. Let’s say you meet 30 different people every day at school. That’s approximately three homeless students whom you may come across on a daily basis without even realizing it.
As John and Mary say in the interview, “SPIRITNYS will not only provide the homeless students with a chance to fulfill their life goal but also will give ordinary people a platform to understand the situation of this inferior group better. Both the living situation and experiences of homeless teenagers that are neglected by the world.”
The common perception for a homeless person would be that they are disobedient teenagers who are runaways, drug users, or even someone who must have done some criminal activities, which is different from reality. The reality is most of them are the victims of abuse or violent crime or experiencing parental rejection of a child. And some of them want to escape from their parents’ lifestyle or in a lack of support from their guardians (parents, stepparent, foster-parent). 49% of them experience the death of their parents. They are the victims of all kinds of circumstances that they were placed in unwillingly.
To create an effective organization, John and Mary Thompson are facing two ongoing concerns. Finding both more donors and volunteers for SPIRIT through online platforms such as the organization’s website, Facebook, and Instagram has been challenging. At this stage, they have already collaborated with three of the Rochester local high schools (Franklin, Edison, and Northeast) to associate homeless students in need. But the number of existing and prospective donors is way less than expected. Another concern turns out to be more ethical, that is how to treat those homeless students appropriately, and is “homeless” an offensive word when they advertise the organization online? “Many of the homeless students are sensitive to this word,” said John Thompson, “but then how to describe them when you try to introduce the organization’s purpose to the public and how to bring up people’s empathy for them?” That is, the organization needs more website traffic, more engagement, and more conversions in a more gentle and seamless way.
For now, John and Mary Thompson are leading SPIRITNYS to collaborate with several professors and students from several classes at the University of Rochester to solve the challenges they’re facing. The students from the University of Rochester are working on a new revision of the current organization’s website while designing a set of marketing plans for the organization’s future advertising campaigns.
With the help of the society and different facilities, SPIRITNYS will continuously support independent teenagers in living better lives and having better schooling environments in the Rochester area. “Rochester has always been noted for its philanthropic activities and we believe it will embrace the mission of SPIRITNYS. Our vision is that SPIRITNYS will be a seed organization and our efforts will lead to building chapters in other communities.” said John and Mary Thompson.