This week, we watched a documentary focusing on homeless, and nearly homeless, children in Orange County. The common factor for many of these children was that they attended a school whose mission was specifically to serve their particular demographic. The school offers many valuable services to the children who attend it, beyond its baseic function as a institution of learning. It provides meals to the children, both during the day, and groceries for the family. It also provides a bus service which goes anywhere necessary to pick them up, even if they are currently living in the park. And it provides a measure of stability to lives which are often anything but.

At the same time, what the school offers isn’t nearly enough.  One classroom often hosts several grades, which is not conductive to learning. The food is not exactly of the highest quality,  as one teacher says, “I wouldn’t eat it”. And the efforts the staff makes cannot possibly alleviate all of the problems the children face.

For me, the film raised an important question. What do we do when the services provided by organizations meant to serve the homeless are inadequate? To ignore or condemn organizations which do good work simply because they do not do enough seems unfair, yet at the same time it cannot be ignored that the work they do is often not up to par with the problems they face.