Palm Beach County residents were asked:
Please tell us about an important moment in your life that would help someone understand what it’s like living in your neighborhood.
The stories and micro-narratives they submitted (as part of the We Are Here SenseMaker project) are listed below. Click ZOOM IN to learn more about the community member and how they interpreted their submission. NOTE: Some stories were partially transcribed by volunteers who shortened the narratives and referred to the storytellers in the third person (e.g., “her experience was” instead of “my experience was”).
From experience coming from New York to here, you have more help up there. It’s harder to find resources down here. I was in a bad relationship last year that left me homeless. There are no shelters around here. Now I am better but at the time I had no where to go. I saw a guy walking out of an empty building and was wondering what he was doing in there. People were sleeping in empty buildings. I’ve had a lot of good experiences too. A lot of mission teams came and helped people fix up their houses and that’s nice to see. The First Methodist Church makes you feel really welcomed and help a lot. Pahokee isn’t that bad it just needs some work. Only a few people show up to the town meetings and obviously nothing is going to get done if no one is telling them what we need.
I pride myself on being the ladies’ man. I love the attention I got from the neighborhood women but not the m
More and more Americans who struggle to get by are living in these marginalized, disinvested communities where jobs and educational opportunities are scarce, and an increasingly militarized police force is the primary contact residents have with government.
I saw death the morning of my high school graduation. It let me know about
Getting into sports was important in my life. It’s wasn’t that many options for me because I didn’t want to be a doctor or anything. So I played sports to keep me off the streets.
What it’s like living in my neighborhood.Well you have 10th ave where the young boys sell drugs and the park where we have our little league football. Things bad around here no structure at all. Hopefully we can come together one day and clean up the streets .