Next year Covenant House New Jersey will celebrate 25 years of serving kids throughout the state. Since we began in Atlantic City, this milestone is especially meaningful to us. In a planning meeting a week or so ago we discussed the need to reconnect with former youth from as far back as we could to help with events, media coverage, capturing stories, etc. I was given the task to find these kids. I squirmed a bit and mentioned that we did not have contact info for the majority of them...but I'd bet plenty were on Facebook. CHNJ has it's own page but I was given permission to create an alumni page and try to "friend" as many youth 10+ years out as I could. I wondered how successful this would be...
Another staff and I set up the page...I created a little message to send out, very professional and matter of fact, gathered some old lists of former kids, searched through old photos, and sat with staff who'd been around longer than I to get names. Then I started the search...
One of the lines I put in my message was, "If you choose not to revisit this chapter of your life, we respect that and will not reach out to you again", realizing that some youth may not want to reconnect. Staying in a homeless shelter when you're a teenager is traumatic enough in itself and I figured that some kids, especially ones that didn't have great experiences with us, would prefer to leave us in their past.
Within the first 2 days we had about 18 kids join the page. Many were so excited about our anniversary and that we'd "found" them. They posted such wonderful words about us ("Covenant House saved my life!" "You guys made the difference") It was so...affirming.
As I went through this week I kept finding kids through the friend lists of other kids...although this has been difficult because many don't use their real names. How do I know if "Get Dat Money" or "Sweet Vanilla Kiss" is someone who stayed at the Cov? Still, the ones who joined the page began to suggest other kids to us, eager to reconnect, revisit, re-read that long forgotten chapter of their lives.
I found kids I didn't even know who were there before I started. They'd ask about staff they remembered and were super excited that they were still there.
One young lady I found yesterday (well, hardly young lady--she's 32 now) was one I had a special place in my heart for. She'd been with us in 2000 and we'd kept in touch sporadically over the years. I'd last heard from her about 2 years ago when she sent me a letter asking for help because she was in rehab. By the time I'd received the letter, she'd moved on to another facility so I lost track of her. When I found her FB page, I saw with a bit of disappointment that there hadn't been any activity on her page since April. Still, I sent a message and request and prayed a quick prayer that God would help reconnect her with us.
My phone rang in the afternoon and as I glanced at the caller ID I saw it was an out of state number. When I answered I heard, "Hey, Beautiful"...which was this young lady's standard greeting for me since way back when. I couldn't believe it! (but then again, WHY are we surprised when God answers prayer!?) She'd been fooling with her phone and discovered that she could access her FB account which she hadn't done in months, saw our request (I'd included my phone number) and called. We caught up for a long time, laughing, remembering, re-reading that Chapter 2000-2001 together.
As of Friday afternoon we had 60 kids join the page. Some are doing really well--married, good jobs, stable. Some, well, still alive and maintaining. But the fact that they have chosen to reconnect with us speaks volumes. Throughout the week they began calling, stopping by, many older than the front line workers we have working there now. They joke about the 7pm curfew they had to endure as young mothers, brag about still being in the same apartment they've been in the last 12 years, chuckle at the grief they gave us and the antics they were involved in so many years ago. Above all, I'm so SO thankful to still be there, to be a familiar face for them along with a few others, that the "Ms. Jen" that was written in that chapter of their lives is the same one they remembered.
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