This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we continue with our American stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next we have a story from

Steve Bunyard. Steve is the president of Reignite Hope, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles,

California. Reignite Hope trained students for a career in welding, gets them certified in the welding

trade, and then assist them with job placement.

Here's Steve with a story.

Rignite Hope started about 11 years ago, up on Skid Row in Los Angeles.

Skid Row is, and I guess they call it that because that's kind of where you hit the skids, I guess. It's huge here in Los Angeles. Skid Row is, and I guess they call it that because that's kind of where you hit

the skids, I guess. It's huge here in Los Angeles. In LA County, numbers are as high as 70,000

people a night sleep on the streets. It's really an incredible plague, epidemic, whatever you want to call it.

Way back in the day when I was younger and growing up, homeless usually just meant men.

Now it's families.

It's women, it's children.

You see them sleeping on a sidewalk in a little tent overnight.

They don't have a way to support themselves.

Life has somehow gone upside down for them. Every story's have a way to support themselves. Life is somehow going upside down

for them. Every story's different. Every story is unique. I was a pastor at a local church at the time.

I've been on staff there for a lot of years, and our church was doing what a lot of churches do,

up on Skid Row coming up there and bringing food and blankets and hygiene kits and things like that.

And we were working with a pretty famous homeless mission up there called the Fred Jordan Mission.

And we would go up there and do our best to help the homeless.

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