Sister Patricia Cruise at the 23rd Annual Covenant House Awards Dinner

Sister Patricia A. Cruise, S.C., President of Covenant House, attended the Covenant House 23^rd Annual Awards Dinner Honoring John Devaney at the Waldorf=Astoria in New York City to raise funds for the homeless youth of Covenant House and honor the philanthropic work of John Devaney, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of United Capital Markets Holdings, Inc. The following are her remarks.

I would like to begin with a few brief thank-you's...

Can I ask the young people we have with us from Covenant House tonight to please stand...

To our kids here tonight ... to the 61,000 who will come through our doors this year, and to the one million we've been blessed to help since 1972:

Thank you for your goodness, your bravery, and your spirit. Thank you for not giving up against incredible odds. And thank you for letting us share in your lives, your dreams, your pain, and your triumphs.

My thanks to our honoree, John Devaney. John, your support will provide hope to thousands of homeless kids.

My thanks to Bill Hemmer for being here to serve as our Master of Ceremonies. Bill, thank you for your time, your talent and your commitment to our kids.

My thanks to our Corporate Board Chairman Bill Montgoris for his leadership and his vision ... to all the members of our Corporate and Site Boards ... and to our executive directors, staff, and volunteers:

The dedication you bring to your jobs every day is a real blessing in the lives of our kids.

My special thanks to Tom Marano. Tom, thanks so much not only for helping to make this evening possible but for all you do as a member of our Corporate Board to give so many of our kids the chance to dream of a better future.

One year ago, when we gathered in this same ballroom ... just a few blocks and a world away from the lonely streets where children are being bought and sold...

...I issued a challenge...

A challenge for all of us to dream of new possibilities ... new ways to help our kids.

A challenge for all of us to pool our resources, our knowledge, our compassion...

...to be bold and dream of a world where no child is forced to live on the street as their only option.

I am very pleased to report that since that night in June last year...

...we have helped over 61,000 children get off the streets...

...We have opened more crisis shelters, and launched new programs to provide our kids with real jobs and real hope...

...We have developed a five-year strategic plan that calls the entire agency to excellence ... because our children deserve no less...

...and in the process, we have raised over $130 million dollars for our cause...

I thank all of you for being here ... and for being part of this very special experiment we call Covenant House.

Over one million young people have found peace, and hope, and a second chance at Covenant House since we opened our doors 35 years ago...

Imagine that with me for a moment...

Picture thousands and thousands of bag lunches, packed with love and given to starving kids on the streets...

Imagine hospitals filled with street kids ... being given life-saving medical care for everything from frostbite to gunshot wounds...

Think about entire communities of former street children ... young people now in their thirties and forties who are taxpayers ... with homes, and good jobs, and children of their own...

That is the miracle of Covenant House.

I was struck recently by something I read about in the news ... maybe you saw it, too.

Representative Tim Ryan and three other members of Congress embarked on something they called the "The Food Stamp Challenge."

The idea was to live for one week on $21 worth of food ... that's the equivalent of the benefits received by the average food stamp recipient.

After one week, here is what Representative Ryan had to say:

I learned that the 26 million Americans living on food stamps are really just one event away from disaster. You are constantly living on the edge. It also showed me that the stress of having so little to spend forced me into some bad choices.

...One event away from disaster...

...Living on the edge...

...Bad choices...

Sounds an awful lot like our kids, doesn't it?

Our kids -- the kids we serve -- live this experience every night. The only difference is they don't have $21 in their pockets.

That's why what we do at Covenant House is special.

As a private, mission-based program with absolute respect and unconditional love at our very core -- we have the freedom to do what most of the government agencies and shelters don't.

And so we build places where the first thing a street kid sees is not a steel door ... but a smiling face...

...and it feels more like home.

We build places where we provide each child with a warm meal, and a clean bed, with no questions asked...

...and it feels more like home.

We provide caring staff and dedicated volunteer mentors... and what we get in return is the thrill of seeing good young people grow and prosper in ways they never believed possible.

In the child care community, Covenant House is known as the place for second chances ... we are also known as the place that TAKES chances.

We wear that badge with honor.

The vast majority of kids who come to us are underdogs ... long shots who have been tossed aside by their 18^th birthdays.

At Covenant House we stand up to this and we say...

...no.

We are the mission that WANTS to be there for these kids when no one else is...

We WANT to take the risk. We NEED to push and live on the edge with these kids ... because quite simply, they have no one else.

Our mission gives us the freedom to set bold goals...

...like working towards the day when NO young person will have to spend a night on the streets.

...like striving to be THE VOICE for homeless youth...

...and to have these goals enabled by an unwavering call to excellence.

These visions are at the heart of our new strategic plan.

We recognize that to save even more lives, we need to work with other organizations...

We need to build partnerships and alliances. We have to know what other organizations are doing around the world if we're to have any chance of ending homelessness.

Last year, our crisis hotline, the Covenant House Nineline, received almost a half million calls -- 48,000 were from young people in immediate danger.

We were able to reach out and save those kids ... because of your support...

...AND because we work with over 30,000 other agencies across the country to save our kids.

And so the NINELINE isn't just about Covenant House ... it's about Covenant House being the leader who brings a lot of good agencies and good people together.

The result?

When they needed it most ... at the most desperate time in their lives ... almost 50,000 kids calling in crisis didn't get an answering machine telling them to call back tomorrow...

They got a real person ... a caring person ... and an expert counselor...

Covenant House at its best.

Now we must face a new enemy with the same conviction ... human trafficking.

Human trafficking is modern-day slavery...

Human trafficking is now considered the third-highest criminal industry in the world.

The faces of human trafficking are young children, women, and members of poverty-stricken families ... victims used like commodities for commercial sex or forced labor.

Covenant House operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center to aid the hundreds of thousands of victims of trafficking in the United States and throughout the world.

And just last month, Covenant House and 17 other leading organizations were invited to a Global Initiative to Combat Human Trafficking in Vienna.

Covenant House can -- must -- and will -- take a leadership role in defending the rights of children all over the world.

We are in a unique position to do so.

Why?

Because we are not tied to institutionalized ways of doing things.

We are different ... and our difference is the value proposition we bring to efforts like the Global Initiative to Combat Trafficking.

The challenges we face are daunting. Among industrialized nations, youth in the U.S. suffer from some of the highest rates of poverty...

...teen pregnancy

...drug use

...suicide

...and lack of educational achievement.

The foster care system in this country is broken ... it functions as a virtual revolving door. Every year 25,000 youth leave the foster care system, many with no place to go.

In Florida alone, the foster care system is so overburdened that Covenant House has become one of their most important resources ... people working in foster care know young people will be welcomed at Covenant House to be safe and to grow.

Beyond our borders, our Covenant House staff face extreme challenges:

-- an estimated two million children are living on the streets of Mexico...

-- Poverty, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS are running rampant in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua...

Our mission calls us to be there for all these kids ... they have no one else.

Let me give you just one example of how Covenant House is making a real difference.

Recently, an 18-year-old young man called the Covenant House Nineline -- based in New York -- from an adult shelter in Atlanta, where he was being harassed and feared for his life.

Our Nineline counselor in New York contacted the Covenant House Outreach team in Atlanta...

...who picked up the young man in our van and brought him to our crisis shelter.

Open only a week, the Crisis Shelter in Atlanta was already filled to capacity. But we gave the young man a mat on the floor, and made him a promise ... the same promise we make to all our kids ... that he would be safe with us.

He slept on that mat for the next 12 hours...

The only exceptional aspect of this story is that it is by no means exceptional...

...it is repeated every day and every night

...in every one of our Covenant House locations.

Covenant House was there for that young man and other kids like him, in Atlanta...

...And in St. Louis, where a new 20-bed crisis shelter this year will be an answer to the prayers of the 36 percent of youth living in poverty in that city.

We're in Michigan, where Covenant House is helping to educate close 2,000 homeless street youth in three charter schools...

And in New Jersey, where our 72 shelter beds are constantly filled and where our staff is doing groundbreaking work to help street kids with mental health problems.

In New Orleans, where 80 percent of the licensed child care centers are gone -- wiped out by Katrina -- the strain has been enormous.

Our Covenant House New Orleans staff has stepped up to the challenge heroically and become the center of operations and a sanctuary not only for homeless and runaway youth, but for New Orleans' sick, displaced, and jobless.

When I walk through any of our Covenant House shelters, I'm reminded of what Senator Robert F. Kennedy used to say when speaking to those yearning for more of a voice in society:

"Some see things as they are and say why ... I dream things that never were and say, why not?"

Thirty five years ago, the doors of Covenant House opened because a lot of good people dreamed of a place where homeless kids would be safe, and loved, and nurtured.

One million lives later, that dream is alive and well. Now it's up to us. Let's continue to take this dream and bring it to even more suffering children of the street.

In closing, as we celebrate at our tables tonight, I want to leave you with one final thought...

Just a few weeks ago, we received a call from the U.S. Military at our Covenant House in Pennsylvania. They informed us that a young man was killed in Iraq.

When his records were pulled, they found he had listed Covenant House as his last known residence.

He also listed us as his next of kin.

God bless his soul and every one of our kids. On their behalf, I thank you for being here tonight.

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