before they take the shot, and i think that the same thing is true for the rest of us. we have to picture what our goal is, is looking like and not just pick an arbitrary goal. but what do we want our life to look like? and then create a plan to get there and we can help kids do better, but it's in their hands. it's in their hands, that's a lesson every kid should learn and they should have chapter responsibility. i can make sure that i never live in poverty. and my kids never live in poverty. if i do the right thing. i hello, my name is wendy 18 years old. i go to cabra high school, and i am

a senior this year. growing up there was 8 of a still live together. there is a 3 bedroom house. there was a lot of the economy hit and everything. my parents, both, they both had lost their job. it was kind of hard for us to even like have food, all my life even now i'm still on free and reduced lunch. so now we have free reduced lunch. my little brother has free and reduced lunch, and there was 5 of i thought my year i was 15. i was on a journey with rtp and coming back, feeling nauseous. from there i started noticing that i was doing different all of a sudden like you're either believe me or you're pregnant and i was like, i don't think i'm believe big like i eat all the time because i like, well, i watch for pregnancy tests and i was like what kinda looked at or and so i do the pregnancy tests and they came out positive been just kind of cried. so my mom told

me what any other parent would say to their kid. she said, you're going to be fine. we're going to get through this, no matter what happened in what am i going to do? how am i going to finish school? how am i going to do any of that at all? mm. terrified out of my mind. mm. it turns out that in the u. s. right now, an awful lot of children are being born to young parents and parents who are not married to each other. that is about 50 percent of the birth amongst the youngest generation. in other words, about half of the birth in the youngest generation are babies born outside of marriage to typically quite young parents. we haven't worn over the years by doing careful with kids who are single parents, families,

generally education and brought them in themselves and was able thing. they also had then kids who come from every couple of them in one of our kids working with their very parents and with the child with their parents, that also can make a huge difference. they'll do better in school, will be more likely will the college and even though family composition has changed dramatically over the last 3 or 4 decades and way more families waves where kids are, where we're both americans are gonna figure this out. single parents alone have a high stress levels, have stigma that comes against them because they're single parents, ah, teenagers. we have these adult pharma, but we feel like we don't. but we're, we're very malleable and we're still chilled way our emotions go up and down and

know what happens in so many kids are making very tough decisions around friends and peer group. they make a lot of decisions around relationships and with a phone with, in the intimacy with those people. and this kind of like these top names like what really hinders a lot of kids in poverty. i never thought i would ever simply because i was i still am a straight a student. i do so much charity work so much community service or everyone at school is like, wendy's isn't she? the smart one is that she got away from her family. isn't she the church girl? i never thought that would happen. you don't think from 19. is going to pop out 9 months later. you just think what happened one here. keep going was going to happen . and know when you see the picture, blue, your whole world just turn upside down

i when you're talking about the idea of participating in risky behavior, whether we're talking about having sex, doing drugs, drinking, watching pornography, whatever it is, and getting involved in social media and becoming really addicted to whatever device it is that you're using for talking about any of those risky behaviors. i think it's important to consider the outcomes of those things. it's important to consider that we're not living for just this moment. we have a child, you know, don't, don't fall into the teen pregnancy element. really think about the cost that it takes to be a parent, the cost in time, the cost and finances. and i would encourage you to wait until you're married before you hit wait until you know you've got that 2nd parent. that 2nd income that

can help you raise that child. what give me is when i see a kid with all the academic rocking, you know, they get these all lazy. finally, they finally break this last feeling where they put all the hard work in their academics. but then they get pregnant with their, with their high school. and i literally just take 3 step back. and i think it's because there's this huge emotional intelligence where we just don't talk about like relationships and the strategy around what you do as an emotional being ah, i'm always been a daddy's girl. i would go to him for everything. when i got pregnant, he didn't belong. he had different views and i did. when i told him i was going to keep matthew. he said, you're going to keep them. well, i'm not going to keep you like he suddenly completely. i had matthew in april of

2016. i called him a month later to see how he was doing, just to catch up to see if you wanted to see my son. he called me. he's like, i still can't believe you decided to keep him. you could have had a future. now you're not going to have anything. and it's been still 3 years. and i haven't heard from him once. i've heard from people, one of my teachers actually that it, when i wasn't there. and everyone from the class told me she said if wendy was my daughter, i would take the baby away from her and raised myself so that she teachers. but now she's not going to amount to anything. and hearing it from my dad, now him saying, you're not going about anything. you're not going to have a future anymore. because i decided to keep my son. it broke me in a we, as a society, have we've been,

we've been dishonest because what we have said is that you can behave any way that you choose. you can make any decision or choice that you want to make whatever you feel this this day. you can make those kinds of decisions and we will do the best that we can to alleviate the card. that the fact is we cannot alleviate the constantly, it is true that you make your own decisions. you can choose any of these path that you want to choose, that we are being dishonest to you when we say we can help you avoid. there are consequences for the choices that you having sex outside of marriage is not going to fill the void that you're trying to do. it only creates more and more of a vast open wound. deep within you because you are opening yourself in the most vulnerable way to another human being who is in no

way committed to you and his actions are really out of selfishness likely and a desire to meet a need that day the day i had them, i started getting ready. i started getting pain and then by the time i got there, they told me was too late for me david. guess after? i'm just falling crying. my. i was like, i don't know what to do. i've never done this. and whenever he got there, i was scared the 1st time i change just like right. like i can change the diaper. he listened like what do you mean? you can't just diapers like i can't do this. i am 16, i can do the i cannot support for him. i cannot do school work and raise a child. i'm staring at this precious little boy smile at me and i kept. i don't. the only thing going through my head it was. ah,

if you find yourself pregnant at 15, there is no easy option for you. you can choose to have an abortion, and that is not an easy option. it leaves damage for the rest of your life for you and for your family. having a child at 15 lead to all kinds of issues because now you're not just a typical high school kid. you're responsible for another human being. you're going to have to find a way to bring in can you're going to have to tend to take baby in the middle of the night when you have homework and you have to get up personally and go to class yourself. and then your other option would be to place your baby for adoption, which is the most difficult decision i've ever seen. a young person, it is a wonderful choice, and it is often the best choice for that child, but it is heart wrenching and extremely difficult. so once you find yourself in an

unplanned pregnancy, we can't take away those consequences and you now have very difficult decisions to ah, so i have my little brother, he's like, i have my son about the 2 and april. i wake up at 6 in the morning at around 7. i will wake up, my little brother, and not around 720. i will get master ready. i'll drop them off at my sisters at 730. take my little brother. score 730. i get to school and i'm racing. i'm running, rushing to get there. i get out of school at 130 and i was going to work at 2. i get off the school. i am at the south. i play with matthew for the 30 minutes, but i have and then i go to work. and whenever i get my 30 minute lunch break, so the thing thing go to my sister's house and spend time with them and go back. and then i get off before or online. i are going to put them both after i put them please, i will start working on my homework 30 and i usually fall asleep. i don't wanna

use i ah, i use so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy going from taishan. let it be an arms race is on often very dramatic development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful,

very critical time time to sit down and talk. i met my little weekend and they wanted me to get me up now because you guys are not going to the the up in the kitchen. you can only be able out them or not. i stick to my don't get a get. we'll put it on the show that the lady said, well, i mean, really lucky. done this the lamp up and everybody who bye

bye bye now bye. and then you guys are allowed me ah, i will, i

will. ah, so what i would say to a 15 year old is i apologize that had convinced me that you are lazy, that you are todd or that you are incapable that you are. because i don't lose any of that, said the abilene that yeah, i believe that greatness is i believe that you bring value into other people's lives. then you'll bring value into the life of the child. if you choose that it's not going to be and we have failed, and it is now our job to come alongside and supported, to enable you to make better choices. ah, my momma watch, matthew. the 1st here that i had, and i would always tell them. thank you mom. i love you, i appreciate you. and what she would say back was all okay. me. she chose her love

differently to show her love by watching him taking care of me. making sure i had a roof over my head. ah, she told me for the 1st time. i know i never tell you that often, but i am so proud of you. to have a baby you are working, you're going to fall. not only that you're getting scholarship, she told me that i was a fighter. and if you're a strong woman fighter for me to get a message from her saying, i'm proud of you and everything that you're complicating and everything that you're doing for me was the best present i can ever get. this is what i have been working for years to get a simple, i'm proud of me . there is

a group of villagers working killed by river when someone in the group noticed the baby floating downstream i. one of the men rushed into the y rescued. the baby and brought it to shore. before he could recover, a number of babies were found floating downstream. before long, there was a steady flow of things floating down the river and the whole village was involved in the rescue efforts. pulling babies out of the water and making sure they were made safe. but not all of them could be. i summer pulled under by the raging river. other slipped through the villagers hands while others fell back into the water as the villagers tried to save them. the villagers were saving as many babies as they could before along the beginning. so asked if from all their efforts

frustrated controversy arrested. which one could argue that every possible handling needed downstream to help us. you know, they didn't have everyone's help, they would lose too many downstream. the other group argue that every possible hand was needed upstream. they could find out how the babies were getting into the water table, all of them and eliminate the need for the costly and time consuming effort downstream. find out how these babies are falling into the river in the 1st place. we can stop in no more, babies will drown figure upstream. we can eliminate the cause of the problem. me, but is too risky. not fail or take too long? lose too many live me.

i to the once and future children to fix the problem upstream. phase one else falling into the river. a drink from a separate water fountain. you've been one of them, i call it till i was 12 years though. okay. it was different about the water coming out of that found me person. so the other mountain that wasn't supposed to me, i grew up my real life, most buried that keep people from completely experiencing all that life, offer me of placed around in children. you know, there are 2 ways to address poverty. one is to try to prevent it from ever

occurring in the 1st place. and the 2nd is, if it does occur to ameliorate, provide people with assistance with child care with housing. so it has to be have to help those who need now. and you have to help those who might be in the future. and in order to do both, you have to now and work downstream circumstances that got us where we are unique. and so our approach, every person and every family and poverty, needs to be as unique as that person and that family. and that's difficult to do, and it's a little overwhelming to think about. but people are different. it's interesting looking back historically on what we've done to address poverty in the united states. it's mostly been to provide people with assistance. so various kinds and those things are needed. i think we should not lead people destitute and without

such assistance. but there's not a lot of evidence that those things are going to move people out of poverty except temporarily. i don't think americans are in favor of simply redistributing income. what they want is to provide everyone an opportunity to get ahead on their own. we believe in equality of opportunities, not equality of results. i went to a conference when the conference was an opportunity conference where we invited 74 families from our community in hopes to just allow a pathway to cycle out of poverty. majority of the people in this conference were generational poverty. so they came in and they heard from dr. donna, be goal a her story and were encouraged, it was 6 hour program and she would say, how many of you know what it is to have. just going to notice how many of you know

what it is did receive an eviction notice. and before long arms were coming up and she allowed them to see that if i can do it, you can to, we all have hope with and sometimes it just gets buried. so i had the opportunity visibly see hope rise to the surface of heaven for people. and that's not something that you can contain. we knew you can't contain hope. i left this place with hope and i'm going to tell her everybody about it. i want them to know what i know and i'm going to succeed because people came in the room that didn't know me. and i matter. i was important. i. i am part right. i'm no longer in isolation where i'm irrelevant or i have to walk around and lead with the label. shane, little by little. the whole starts to take that label off. and when people come into place, you're able to replace that label with words. a word,

instead of allowing them person to feel me, we all are the same when it comes to what our basic needs are and what our basic desires are. and i think if we really think about what we have in common with one another, that's where we can start to create a basis of understanding a person saying, i'm not going to judge you. i'm not going to criticize you. i'm not going to be value your lived experience because it's different than mine. you say to the other human being, what ever dream you've ever had. it's still, oh i when i was growing, it felt like there were a youth in that were completely offering. and there were a few kids that were trying really hard to make good choices and really had their

focus set where it needed to be that most of or somewhere in this gray area where we're trying to get our toes as close to the line as we can without completely stepping over, but we weren't really convicted either way and we're just all kind of trying to get 9, get them. what i see now is that there are more kids off the ram. there are very few kids in the gray area that there are a lot of young people who are committed to are strong, who are folk who want to make good news and who are making and having an impact on the people around. that is my hope for the next generation in awe. and that hope comes from the stories

that hope comes from us, saying to our call, you can do this. we're going to stand by you. we're going to help you get through this. they have the power to turn the shipper right. and it happens by making one good decision after the new one of the bigger you have to realize if you do some fortunate, 20 for our compound interest of things that like we're going to take you to places that you can even understand what you do today. is going to play more compound interest. if anything else you're playing a game that's bigger than yourself. you're playing a game for yourself, for your family's name, for your kids that don't even exist yet for your dream kids who are going to benefit off of the hardware. ah, not all poverty is preventable,

but we know certainly that based on research and the research that we're using for our program and some of that can be preventable, we want to help them. we want to help the community around us. and that's what we're trying to rally our community around and support a lot of times when i work with people who currently live in the crisis of poverty, not smart enough to get, you know, smart enough to go to college, got to ask for help. god ask for help in poverty tv. you don't ask for help. that's the wrong message. nobody makes it alone. absolutely no one. we have to work together. we have to overlap with other organizations. we have to be community fighting. the key is allowing hope and we can't allow for, we can't communicate hope we can allow worse than television relationship. if we can spark of movement, that not only helps those who are in the river, but also gives them the tool to help their kids and their kids, kids not being the river, that's the movement we want. when we reach out to people across these barriers,

poverty barriers, political opinions, ah, we can really find some unique treasures and people who are different from us and find out that they're not so different after all i use use use . ah

ah, oh the join me every thursday and the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guess in the world, the politics sport, business. i'm show business. i'll see you then me quoted mechanics work so well. people don't like to use the word inconsistent. they like to say, oh it's, it's amazing and comprehensible. mysterious. when i say it can't be quite right. and this is what direct says,

this is what i just was reading the i don't know, i mean there are some steps in there were rescuing the food that they were scabbing or, or where were rescuing resources that are still good. this is best by march 21st, which is in 2 days. all these potatoes, power, pianos, onions, all of these came from waste brown sources. this is great for me because i'm always looking for a way to give things away. dr. because the tax laws, you know, definitely do benefit the wealthier people and our society. so it makes sense for them to throw it out right off, rather than give it to somebody who could use it. and then that person is not going to buy it. the the, the,

the, the headlines and i'll tell you russia is top level economic forum in st. petersburg is in top gay with the russian president vladimir, to expect to speak at the event and just a few minutes talking. meanwhile, there is consensus that before and widespread vaccinations the only way to get the global economy back on you quickly. guest speakers highlight the hurdles we face as we try to return to normal. it's a shame the politics is limited. the distribution of europe, european commission made a big mistake at the very beginning by considering vaccines as if they were issues of ideology. it has the human quality that's pretty, but also to come no economy with advantage in order to bring to gas pipeline is

back in the news. this time with russia is energy ministry expressing high.