Leah Adams, welcome to the interview today! You’ve been with Daybreak for a while now, could you tell us how long you’ve been a part of Daybreak?
I will have been a Daybreak employee for 18 years this coming October. I know, milestone!
Yeah, that’s awesome! When you first came to Daybreak, you were in college?
Yes, I did an internship through my college here at Daybreak and then ended up getting hired on full-time once I graduated.
How has Daybreak changed or grown since you first started here?
It’s grown tremendously. When I started, we only served up to age 18 in the shelter. We were at our old location over on Wayne Avenue so we didn’t have the individual rooms like we do now.
It was just a much smaller space and a lot of youth. Now we have a lot more space for them to spread out and obviously the individual rooms is a huge plus. We had two apartments in our Transitional Living Program and we’re now pushing I think almost one hundred. We’ve grown in the services we provide and the amount of clients that we can serve.
It’s been amazing to see.
Do you know around how many clients, when you started, you would see in a year?
I would say probably more than one hundred. I wouldn’t think more than probably three hundred at the most.
That’s a very big difference! The individual rooms—I can’t even imagine now. I’d heard Alisha Eilers in her interview, she was talking about having the girls’ area and the boys’ area and the bunk beds.
Oh yeah and sharing dressers. But it grew and functioned, it worked for a long time until we just grew out of it.
What do you most enjoy about Daybreak and the work that we do here?
I enjoy the success stories, obviously. I love seeing our youth and young adults grow and mature and become independent and self-sufficient young adults.
It’s amazing to see that growth and to know that you had a hand in that happening. It just makes you feel good and solidifies why we’re here in the community and the services we provide and what we do for our youth and young adults.
Yeah, definitely! I think Justin was talking about adulting and it is kind of like having that caring community in your life that you can have help with. What has surprised you the most in your time here?
I would say the diversity of what we see and what we deal with day to day.
I think a lot of people have a stereotypical idea of what a homeless youth or young adult looks like and acts like and that’s not always the case.
It’s interesting to see no matter what background they come from, no matter what socioeconomic status the family is that they come from, it doesn’t matter. They’re all at the end of the day young adults that need help and weren’t given that help necessarily from their families. That always shocked me.
I wasn’t very aware of the homeless population in Dayton. I always thought, “Oh, you know it’s New York. It’s these big cities.”
It was shocking to realize we do have quite a large homeless population here in Dayton. It’s interesting to see all the different types of clients that come through our doors and the different issues and struggles they have. It’s very eye opening.
Yes, it’s that everyone thinks there’s that idea, but you never know unless you ask what someone is dealing with, and it can look so many different ways. Thank you for your time.
Yes, of course. Thank you for having me.