 |
I want them to be able to be at peace, to be healthy and be successful. Because life is very hard. And I don’t want them to even struggle a third of what I went through because it’s not right for a child to have to go through the stuff I went through.
- Angela S
|
|
|
 |
Those are my swollen feet when I got home today, after waiting tables. That’s what my feet look like, they hurt. It’s not easy. I’m doing it because my kids needed clothes and sneakers.
- Angelica R
|
|
|
|
|
 |
This is about survival of the fittest. I had to eat out of people's leftovers and I had to wash up in people's backyards in the winter time out of their little faucet, out in the cold. I’ve really struggled. And I’m tired. When do I get a break?
- Angela S
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
This is our stove- it caught on fire while I was cooking and I had to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. Now I can’t use it and I might have to wait months to get a new stove. This is a fire hazard.
- Tera M.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
The corner store is the poor person's version of a supermarket.
- Sherita P.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
When I took that picture I was thinking that they say Philadelphia’s the City of Brotherly Love. But if it’s the City of Brotherly Love why can't anybody even get a job in this city? The people that are really trying to get a job can’t get one.
- Tangela F
|
|
|
|
 |
Regardless of the living conditions, I still try to make a nice, pretty, and decent home for my daughter.
- Renee J.
|
|
 |
"I take the bus to work. That’s why I had the picture of the two bus tokens. My sad, little tokens, because it was these two tokens that I had left for three more days of getting to work. Welfare said they couldn’t give me any more bus fare money because they already gave it to me. But of course, my priority is to feed my kids. I know that going to the job is going to pay me eventually, but I can’t let them starve all week long. So, I’m going to use that money to feed them first."
- Joanna C
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
I was caulking the windows so this picture shows how it looked before it started, like the big cracks on the seams of the windows and then once I filled them in. Trying to weatherize the house, getting it ready for winter to reduce my gas bill.
- Crystal S
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
It has [been hard finding a job, and] everybody’s blaming it on the economy. But there’s plenty of jobs out there… the reason why I know that I haven’t found a job yet is because I haven’t been able to go out [to job sites] because of my money situation. ‘Cause I know if I spend two dollars [on bus fare] I might need that for Pampers…
- Janelle R
|
|
 |
My son, he’s already on the small side and he needs every bit of food that he can get to make him healthy, keep him healthy. He has failure to thrive. He has a bone deficiency that doesn’t allow him to grow. He’s only thirty pounds. He has acid reflux. He had RSV, failure to thrive, chronic asthma
- Melissa H
|
|
 |
He's in a program for teens like eighteen to twenty-five, who have a problem with selling drugs and getting locked up and stuff like that. And they help them get jobs. They train them to do like either construction, cooking, housekeeping, whatever it is that they wanna do. They get them into that training for free and they make sure they have their high school diploma or GED and then they send them to work. He went for construction so pretty soon he’ll be working for construction.
- Melissa H
|
|
 |
Just because he is in Camden does not mean a child won’t come out being happy. Just because this is not the American dream or the American-looking family, that does not mean a child won’t come up all right. I want that image to change, because there’s some good stuff in Camden. It’s not all bad stuff. Kids do grow up happy in Camden. I did. I came out fine.
- Beatrize C.
|
|
|
 |
Thank God for layaway. You can take and layaway a few pairs of pants, or go on the sales rack and they have $3 shirts, grab the kids a few. Last week, the kids needed jackets and I went to Foreman Mills and I was on the sales rack. I was there for hours trying to find stuff on the sales rack. Two-dollar shirts, three-dollar shirts, four-dollar pair of pants… whatever you can find within your reach. I know the government, they see the people who are on Welfare and they’re wearing Gucci and Prada and Polo. If I've got something like that it must’ve been on the three-dollar rack.
- Crystal S
|
|
|
 |
I’ve been trying my best to pay my rent. It’s been a struggle; it’s been hard. I can’t let myself go down. I can’t be in a shelter with five kids. My kids are going to get depressed. Who knows what can happen? I always say I would never give up on my kids.
- Marinette R
|
|
Dornsife School of Public Health 
Drexel University 
