Testimonials
[How is Joe’s Place helping you reach your educational and career goals?]
With the structure [Joe’s Place] makes school work / projects less stressful, the parents of the house will help you with anything. If you are having trouble with some homework you can ask them for help and they will help you like sitting down with you, working out the problems with you.
[Where would you be if you did not have Joe’s Place in your life?]
I for sure wouldn’t be doing homework and probably wouldn’t be going to school.
[How is Joe’s Place helping you reach your educational and career goals?]
Here at Joe’s place, I am given structure and I am communicated with that holds me accountable to my work. Joe’s Place also gives me resources that helps me focus and succeed like food and stability. If I was not at Joe’s Place I would not have food, stability, or accountability and it would be nearly impossible for me to succeed in school.
[Where would you be if you did not have Joe’s Place in your life?]
Joe’s Place, with the combination of amazing adult leadership from MRH and Joe’s Place, is the reason why I feel like I have a bright future ahead of me. In my early high school career, before my attendance at Joe’s Place, I remember crying myself to sleep because I felt like I had no future. If I did not have Joe’s Place, I probably would not go to college, I would live paycheck to paycheck at a job I hate or be in prison.
They helped me with a lot of after school stuff. Living in JP, you would never go backwards.
[To the house parents], I just want to say, thanks to them for encouraging me to do better in life. Not only that but encouraging me to go school.
Committing myself all the way through, made me commit all the way through school. If I had left, [Joe’s Place] I probably wouldn’t have graduated.
Once I got to Joes Place, I surrounded myself with successful people. Just the way they talked and handled themselves, meant a lot. If I didn’t have that, I’d look at life a different way.
Even little things like sitting down for dinner. I had never done that in my whole life. In my family, we just went our own ways. We didn’t talk about things. When [my house parents] asked, I didn’t know how to respond. Didn’t think about that until I went to Joe’s Place.
There were no rules for me growing up. I remember in 4th grade leaving from school and then coming back Monday morning. And it was normal. I looked at Joe’s Place as if it was one of those TV families . . . Brady Bunch. I didn’t think those existed until Joe’s Place. [My house parents] lived like that. They actually lived like that.
Started to see that the way I grew up wasn’t okay. The way it was at Joe’s Place was the way it was supposed to be. Living like that (like my family did) kept them from making certain decisions. Even people who did life “normally”, wasn’t a guarantee. If people lived more like Joe’s Place, the world would be such a different place.
They didn’t give me a fish, they were teaching me to fish. Was an opportunity to learn and grow and become the person I am today.