Home is a place where families live, laugh and cry together. Could you ever imagine losing your home someday and ending up on the streets? The amount of homeless people just in the United States is a lot; according to Social Solutions, over half a million people in the U.S are homeless. Of that number, 15 percent were people in families, 15 percent were individuals, and a quarter of the entire group were children. What is more shocking is that 8 percent of the homeless population are veterans.

According to Christian Community, almost every person who is homeless goes through a process of dehumanization. They are segregated from their families, feared, illegal, poor, attacked by police, and refused a place to sleep. I personally believe that the society we live in today dehumanizes homeless people. When people in my community see a homeless person, they assume that they are either a thief, drug user, an alcoholic or lazy.

I personally witnessed discrimination against a homeless person about a year ago.

It was a late, hot summer afternoon. My dad and I were coming back from a long, tiring shopping trip in Walmart. While we were getting out of the parking lot, I saw this one homeless man sitting a few inches away from the stop sign.

While we were still in the parking lot, my dad got a call from my step mom. He hates to drive and talk on his phone because he just doesn’t want to break the rules even a little bit. So I was bored out of my mind waiting for him to finish talking on the phone.

That’s when the homeless man caught my attention and I just started thinking about life. He was standing there holding a cardboard sign. His clothes were badly worn out and he needed a long, cold shower. A dozen of cars passed right by him and acted like they didn’t see him standing there. This one man in a black truck even told him to get out of the way and called him “worthless trash".

At first I tried to ignore the rude comment that was directed at the homeless guy. But the more I tried to ignore it, the angrier I got. It made me think back to the times that I called someone else worthless or useless. Just why do we think it's okay to call people worthless or useless? Instead of lifting each other up, we put each other down.

I tried to imagine myself as the homeless guy. I tried to just imagine the way he must have felt. He might be homeless, but he’s not worthless trash. He is a human being just like any of us. Isn’t he? Just because he doesn’t have clean clothes and a home like most of us do, doesn’t make him any less human than any of us.

The one question that I kept on asking myself was “Why do we not try to help the homeless?” Just in the state I live in, I see many homeless people. If we actually help the ones in our little town, city, village or even state we could help bring an end to homelessness.

Here are some pieces of advice for everyone, including myself, anywhere in this world:

If you see a homeless person on the street holding a sign, don’t ignore them. Instead, give them anything you have.

It can be as little as food or money. Even if you give them 5 cents it makes a huge difference. We’ve seen a homeless person collecting bottles from the trash. According to coalition for the homeless, they do that because they rely on the income from bringing recyclables to redemption centers for their survival.

You can offer them your recyclables to help.

Another thing that we can do as a society is to stand up for the homeless and be kind to them. Next time you see another person making fun of a homeless person, stand up for them. Be brave and tell them what's right.