My name is Shannon. I am a nurse who lives in the neighborhood. My three (now grown) daughters heard about Rock House Kids from their friends and started going! I started volunteering a couple of years later.
I've been with the Pebbles, the current 1st and 2nd graders, for at least eight years. When I started, we took kids as young as four, so we had quite a spread of ages then.
One of my favorite stories that really opened my eyes to our impact was when we had a fierce little girl who used to come with her much younger cousin. She was usually so mean to her little cousin until I had a heart-to-heart with her about how she was so big and smart and in a great position to be a strong helper to the little one. From that moment on, she took the girl under her wing and helped her do EVERYTHING after that! It was so heartwarming!
Things like that keep me coming back. It's so great to be a positive influence. It's really mind-boggling what these kids go through. I just can't believe how many of them have lost young family members to violence. Just last week, a couple of the kids told me their 10-year-old cousin in Chicago "died because she got shot in the head." So sad! But then it's an opportunity to comfort and spread the peace of God, which passes all understanding.
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