Invisible people TV

I wasn't planning on posting another blog today, and this is entirely unvintage related but it almost brought me to tears so I thought I'd share it anyway. I just came across this blog InvisiblePeople which is a blog to bring awareness to the homeless situation in America. It interviews individual people living on the streets all over America and lets them tell their story. You would be very surprised at how many of these people living in homeless shelters, lining up at soup kitchens, and sleeping on the streets were actually once very successful, educated, contributing members of society who due to some unfortunate turn of events suddenly lost everything. They are not junkies, alcoholics, or criminals but simply your average person that has fallen on hard times. As they admit to in their interviews as well, being homeless is not something that most of us put much thought into. In New Zealand there is little to no reason for anybody to have to live on the streets against their will, in fact aside from the odd glue sniffers you see very few people actually camping out in the inner city. From what I understand things are a lot more difficult in America and certainly in other parts of the world. Even my father was homeless for a time when he first moved to Germany in the late 1970's and talks about sleeping on park benches and hanging out in clubs until closing time so that he would have somewhere warm to stay.
Anyway this blog just really touched me and reminded me of the fact that everybody has their own story and that we shouldn't look down on or treat anybody with anything other than respect because you really do never know.