Giving Compass' Take:

• An individual who is now a sophomore at New York University explains his life as a homeless student in elementary school, and the path he took to get where he is today. 

• How can more schools create formal support systems to address the existing homeless student population? 

• Read about how NYC is coping with the number of homeless students currently in the city. 

No one would have bet that as a homeless child who was orphaned as a high school senior, I’d wind up thriving at New York University on a full scholarship. Here’s how it happened.My first stint of homelessness came in 2009, while I was in elementary school in Nebraska. My mom, my brother and I moved into the Lincoln Connection Homeless Shelter at the start of my fifth-grade year. I was 10 years old.

After I finished elementary school, I moved to Colorado to be with my father. I fell in love with Colorado and my community. I made friends, I had my own shower, and I had a place that felt permanent.

Since leaving the homeless shelter, I felt I had something to prove. I made a promise to myself: I would be more than a statistic.

Whether by others discounting my school and community or by others discounting me personally, I was told my entire life to aim a little bit lower. I needed to show that we are all capable of more. Importantly, I needed to prove that my community was also not a statistic.

All children, but especially homeless children, deserve equal access to resources to have their fair shots at education and to find paths to the futures they dream of. If we were to give all students such opportunities, they would meet them with the perseverance and determination necessary to break the cycle of poverty.

Now that I’m in my second year at NYU, I can look back and see just how extraordinary my situation was. College has provided me the stable environment I didn’t always have as a child. My childhood was way harder than it should have been, and I see how lucky I was to have people who believed in me, who took it upon themselves to help me along.

Read the full article about homeless students by Gavin Arneson at The Hechinger Report