Today the Denver Post released a sobering look at homeless families titled “Trying to Live, Trying to Learn.” Take the time to read this important story of families within our community who are struggling to survive. Watch the video to see the faces of the children and parents. The families chronicled in this story are from East Colfax, but they could have easily been families on West Colfax dealing with the same issues.

In Jefferson County, we are still waking up to the reality of poverty and homeless families right here in our backyard.

The hardest part for me personally is that these children attend our elementary schools. 90% of the children in the six schools we focus on receive free or reduced lunch rates because of family poverty. They are my daughters’ classmates. Yet the difference between how my daughters live and how these children live is huge. They live within walking distance of our house in hotels along West Colfax.

No child or family deserves to live in bedbug infested motel rooms. I firmly believe that each child deserves to have the chance to succeed from cradle to career.

Running school supply drives and sending food home in backpacks, though they are good programs, will not fix the situation so many families are now experiencing. They are bandaids to a gaping wound. We need to look at root causes. We need to demand change.

With our cradle to career initiative we don’t have all the answers, but we are determined to find them together. Our kids deserve to have hope for a better future. Our parents deserve to have a stable living environment for their children.

I dream of the day when we have many stories of children and families who succeeded from their early years through school and into a career. I am not content to just impact a few. I am crazy enough to think that we can impact many children and families by connecting organizations, communities and individuals around a common vision of cradle to career success for ALL kids.