First Hand History

"People are increasingly bad at being able to accept something that’s not exactly what they want, and that’s an incredibly powerful thing."

"As I mentioned, the hospital didn’t have electricity or running water, and most of the windows had been destroyed by the wind, and the rooms have all been flooded, so they were covered with mud and muck and debris""

"That’s something that I have become much more aware of is just how deficient our asylum laws are and how it really needs to be improved..."

"We understand homelessness. And we believe that the single greatest cause to homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of family."

"...I was like, this is every little girl's dream, to be a princess and live in a castle..."

"It was very, very rural. It was in the hills, sort of the foothills of mountains. When I arrived, it was January and there was a ton of snow on the ground. It was freezing cold."

"By the way, my first salary - $87.50 per week for a 35 hour full time week. Seven hours a day, five days a week. $87.50 before taxes. Of course, there were taxes taken out of that. After 90 days, I knew that I would go up to 100 dollars a week, which was $5200 a year."

"I'm seeing that young man's face right now, he was able to read and write a basic letter to his wife, and he was so proud. "

"We had nine refugees living there. They were there secretly...it turned out that one of those nine was a spy."

"The Salvation Army offers a hand to many homeless people who are otherwise invisible. I don’t know of another organization in Austin that focuses on those who are too often otherwise forgotten. "

"We think he came from a home where he was abused, and he had a lot of separation anxiety so it was hard to leave him at home alone. But just getting him into a house, it was amazing how much he grew."

"People who are more educated have better health outcomes they have fewer mental problems you know they just have access to a better life."

"It was important, because it's part of their culture."

"Jazz is important to me because it allows each person and musician to express themselves as their authentic self."

"It’s not so much about doing the thing that everybody thinks and cheers you on for, but doing the thing you know is right."

"What my previous generations had done to the Earth was horrible and I wanted to leave it better than the way I found it."

"The struggle for human rights, for human dignity is constant and it needs to be reinvented every generation, it has to be defended every generation. "

"What we do, is trying to make a case that these programs really are important and really do help people a lot, because there’s lots of research showing that there’s just lots of people who need help. There’s just millions and millions of people who are, some of them are actually homeless, living in the streets."

"My work was really just to assist the lawyers in the office."

"Once you're in there, you realize that we're all humans and we're all out there to do good for each other and help each other."

"There are some people that don’t realize that people with autism can talk and can be very intelligent. There are just a lot of misconceptions about Autism."

"I just like taking care of people who have less access to resources who need good care."

"That's a big part of what we are trying to do -- not just take no for an answer."

"Texas ranks forty-third out of fifty states in the funding of our schools. So it's definitely time to make a change."

"There’s a term in the Bible where God refers to what we do as dead works, as doing things good for people, but then God says, ‘There’s no one good.’ So when you do things without the correct motivation, there’s the implication that it’s void. As I said, whatever good is happening in our country or in the world is still being inspired by God...regardless of what one’s background is."

"There are some times where you have to fight more than others."

"Buy the chocolate bar that's fair trade, it's not hard to do you know I mean? You are going to eat chocolate anyway might as well eat something that's good for the world. "

"Just the fact that our foster care system is still -- 13 years later since I was directly working with it on a regular basis -- it’s still not appropriately funded [is a social injustice]."

"We always held our breaths when each legislature convened because we wondered if there was a bill that would call for the closure of the center."