A High School "Dropout" Drops Back In
After Years of Poverty and homelessness, one man is using education to help turn his life around.

If at-risk children learn one vital lesson in school, it should be: Literacy is key to gaining the skills and confidence you need to break the cycle of poverty and make a better life for yourself.

That lesson is confirmed every day at CityTeam by men like Otis. He discovered too late that failure in school can lead to failure in life. But no he is determined to gain the educational skills he needs to turn his life around.

Otis is from a family of 10 children. His dad was an abusive alcoholic who regularly threatened them with a gun. Despite his horrible home life, Otis managed to make it to 10th grade. But he never really learned to read. Classmates laughed at him, and his teachers couldn't or wouldn't help.

Insecure, angry and embarrassed by his illiteracy, Otis turned to alcohol to mask the pain. By age 12 he was drinking regularly. His only "graduation" was from booze to cocaine.

After dropping out of school, he bounced from one minimum-wage job to another - always in fear that his illiteracy would be exposed. Addiction, poverty, homelessness and, finally, utter defeat followed.

Otis often stayed in shelters. But after sleeping off his high, he would bounce back out into the streets, where drugs were always readily available. "I wanted to get better," he says, "but couldn't escape the drugs." Sadly, few of the shelters made any serious attempt to help him.

But eight months ago, Otis made the choice to change. He went to a nearby church and requested prayer. The pastor told him, "I know a place where you can get help. It's called CityTeam."

Otis joined our Discipleship and Recovery Program. The cry of his heart has been for God to take away his desire to use drugs. "God took it away," he says, " so that I could focus on my recovery and on my learning skills, which I've always been embarrassed about."

Today, thanks to generous partners like you, Otis is improving his reading, math and spelling so that he can increase his chances of getting a job. He also wants to be able to read his Bible.

There's a lesson for those who care about poverty in our community: We must support kids so that they don't follow the dead-end path that Otis traveled and wasted all those years. Your support of efforts like CityTeam's Back to School program - which provides kids with backpacks and school supplies - is a perfect way to help!