- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

November is National Homelessness Awareness Month and National Homeless Youth Awareness Month.

It's a time to shine a light on the efforts to prevent and end homelessness.

Covenant House Michigan serves young adults ages 18 through 24 who are homeless or survivors of human trafficking.

The organization provides shelter, educational and vocational programs, and wraparound services.

Joining me now is Covenant House Michigan CEO Meagan Dunn, along with one of its residents, Layla.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you for having us today, Stephen.

- Yeah, so Covenant House has been one of my favorite nonprofits in Southeast Michigan for a long time, and there's a really specific reason.

I think of nonprofits as often filling kind of critical gaps that exist either in government or other institutional kind of gaps.

But this is a particularly important gap to fill, and Covenant House does it in such a vibrant and creative way that it has always stood out to me.

So let's start with you just kind of explaining the work that you guys do at Covenant House.

- Well, thank you for that acknowledgement.

Nonprofits are on the ground.

So we are, you know, serving our community's most vulnerable every single day, 365 days a year.

And at Covenant House, the way that we approach our work is through unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support.

So before a young person can even start their journey towards ending their experience with homelessness, we start with those three principles because that's what most of us need in order to have the confidence to thrive and succeed.

And once we can establish that trust, the trusting relationship, and when a young person feels safe enough, then we get them on their journey.

And even before the outcome is stable housing, the outcome is that they can go on to live independently, but the journey to get there starts, again, in those first few hours that they arrive at Covenant House.

We then can help them, you know, from a mental health standpoint, you know, over 75%, not just of Covenant House residents, but 75% of young people in general that are experiencing homelessness also experience some issues around mental health challenges.

- Sure, sure.

I think a lot of the viewers might be sitting at home thinking, "Well, how does this happen?"

How do young people come to be homeless on their own and need these services separate from their families?

- There's no one answer, Stephen.

30% of our young people age out of foster care.

So there's so many significant challenges with our foster care system, and that's not specific to Michigan, nationally, that's a problem.

So 30% come from there.

But most of our young people also have some experience with either domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, some very unfortunate situations and stories that happen.

A lot of it is also, they might be the second generation to experience some sort of housing insecurity or homelessness.

You know, when a young person turns 18, our country, the resources really dry up.

They're seen as an adult.

If the family structure is already, you know, living check to check or might be struggling from a financial standpoint, that young person is usually put out to live on their own, and there's not a lot of safety net that's geared towards this age group.

So we see young people that are, they're resilient, they have dreams and aspirations and wanna do so much with their lives, but their safety net, their structure has fallen apart.

And so that's where we step in.

- Yeah, so Layla, you're one of the people who is part of the Covenant House family.

Tell us a little about how you came to be at Covenant House and what you found since you've been there.

- Well, not to get too deep into the story, but it was definitely something that I was looking for in an emergency.

I really needed help at the time and I didn't really know where to turn.

You know, it goes with the codependency of, you know, just being younger and everything.

And so when you don't have that, you know, you don't know where to go.

So it definitely helps being there.

It gives you a place of stability, and I really like that.

- Yeah.

How did you even hear about Covenant House?

Or how did you find it?

- A Google search, really, it was a very quick moment, it wasn't no plans or anything.

I'm grateful that they were able to take me in as fast as they did.

- Yeah, and so when you get there to Covenant House, talk about the kind of things that you found and the kind of support that you felt they were able to give you.

- One of the biggest support is really just being a place for you to be able to build up your strength again.

Again, it's the stability that they offer to be able to just build up from the ground, especially when you often don't have anything when you're there, when you start.

Another thing is definitely their mental health.

I love my counselor there.

So it's someone that you can talk to too when you need the vent, because it could be a lot.

- Yeah, yeah.

And you've already started to think about what this takes you to, what's next?

- Yes, it's always- - Talk about what you're doing - Now really, it's a lot of studying and a lot of schooling.

Definitely trying to get more stable in a career that I'm working towards.

You know, definitely in finance, definitely in psychology.

That's been my focus.

- Yeah, and you had a really great opportunity this summer, right?

- Yes, with, well, it's through Gear Up, but it's for Chase, so it was a good experience to have transactional, yes.

- Wow, what was that like to kind of find yourself there?

- It was definitely a very, you know, cold water thing.

It was something that you had to get fast.

But I do love that type of service, definitely.

- Yeah, yeah.

When you think about when you'll leave Covenant House, what do you think the most important thing you'll kind of take with you from that experience?

- Really, I'd say that you could do so much more on your own.

I mean, you get to realize your own strength because, you know, essentially you are on your own.

They look for you to build yourself up.

And so you get this confidence of you can do it, you know, and it's not as hard and, you know, from nothing, you can have everything, so definitely.

- Meagan, this has gotta be- - Oh my gosh.

- Really great.

- I gotta pull it together, yeah.

- Really great for you to hear.

But I mean, this is exactly the sort of path that you're trying to establish for these young people.

- Absolutely, I mean, our goal is to help eliminate all barriers in order for a young person to feel and be successful, and in the end, that's what they deserve.

So many of us grew up with supportive family structures and there may have been challenges, but overall, we had the support and the confidence to be able to say, "I can have everything."

And so to hear Layla say that, it just, it warms my heart.

It really helps me to understand that the approach to this work that we're doing is the right way.

We're always, you know, listening to our young people, ensuring that we hear their voice, you know, making small tweaks and changes.

You know, there's no one size fits all.

So we've tried our best to provide that individualized care.

And so to hear that, I mean, and just to see how Layla has just really grown at Covenant House.

She's been with us for some time, and just to see her journey, there are many things that keep us nonprofit leaders up at night, but what brings us up the next day, what wakes us up the next morning, is knowing that there are about a hundred young people that sleep in our beds at night across the state, and we're here to continue to work with them.

- Yeah, yeah, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a chance to talk about the particular challenges that nonprofits and especially social service nonprofits are facing right now, budget-wise, things don't look the way they did, you know, 10 months ago, 11 months ago.

- Certainly, you know, the federal uncertainty, so many of us nonprofits have support from the federal government through the various agencies, which all of us, you know, rely upon as revenue to help us to be able to do our programming.

And so knowing that on any given day, there could be that challenge of what if we wake up on this day and these funds are not available?

So many of us have had to do some scenario planning, you know, for things that happen that way.

But then it also impacts the donor community, rightfully so.

People are holding onto their dollars a little tighter.

So I always, I've been saying the last few months, there are times in our careers where we earn our stripes, This is one of them, but we're resilient, we have a very supportive community.

The city of Detroit, even the state of Michigan, so many partners have volunteered to step in to help us ensure that we're able to continue to do this work.

- Yeah.

Are you able to manage all of that without a direct effect on people like Layla, the folks who are depending on you?

- Fortunately at this point, we've been able to continue our programming without any disruption.

And even when we look at scenario planning, we're doing the best plan that we can without any service interruption.

In the end, our goal is always to service young people as best we can every single day.

So at this point, we haven't, and we're very fortunate in that way, but I am having very strategic and aggressive conversations with donors and foundations and individuals and corporations, you know, sharing that we are on the ground.

So we are the ones that are serving our community's most vulnerable.

- Yeah, yeah, Layla, I'm gonna give you the last word here.

What would you say to someone who is right now in the situation you were in before you came to Covenant House about possibility, about the future, about opportunity?

I mean, it seems like all of those things are pretty clear to you now, and they probably weren't before.

- You know, there is always a chance to start over.

You know, never to be attached to too much.

This should be your biggest lesson in that, definitely not to be materially attached to things, but also have goals, you know, because you want more things definitely and life can turn out great.

So yeah, that's the biggest thing.

- How much longer do you imagine you'll be at Covenant House?

- Hopefully not too much longer, but I'm trying to leave it strong as I can, so definitely.

- Will you miss it when you're gone?

- It'll be a point of graduation for me, so I'll miss the people, definitely.

But I'll definitely be happy to know that I'm, you know, I'm on my own now.

- Yeah, well, congratulations on the work and congratulations to you, Meagan, on all the work that you guys are doing, - We appreciate you're paying attention to this.

We do.

- Yeah, it's important and it's so important right now given the climate and as you point out, the uncertainty.