Episode 27: Healing Hardship Through Hearing Others - Abeni Carr

Abeni Carr began her journey as an activist for homeless youth in high schools throughout Los Angeles and Compton. As an educator, fundraiser, and college counselor, she has spent years working with unaccompanied youth and students experiencing homelessness in order to ensure that they applied and were admitted to college, received access to academic and financial aid, and began their post-secondary endeavors with the skills and supplies they needed for a successful college experience. In December 2016, Ms. Carr was reunited with her biological mother and maternal sister, whose life trajectories were complicated by histories of homelessness and human trafficking. As a result of her experiences, Ms. Carr was drawn to engage in the work of combating homelessness and to implement support systems in her own school that would help homeless students overcome the barriers they faced in education. Ms. Carr has fully committed herself to the work of serving homeless students and creating ways to assist these students with gaining mental health care as well as access to transportation, food, and clothing. However, it soon became clear that the needs of this vulnerable population were greater than what her school could provide. In 2019, Ms. Carr launched her nonprofit, Haven's House Youth Services. The fundamental goal of Haven’s House is to change that. Haven’s House Youth Services is a multifunction organization aimed at meeting the educational, residential, and supplemental needs of students, specifically those experiencing housing instability and human trafficking. Currently, Ms. Carr is writing a book, When Abeni Met Betty, about her experiences of being raised with her amazing adopted family and recent reunion with both her biological parents and their families. The narrative dives into the complexities of navigating through identity, forgiveness, and searching for long lost relatives in the social media era. Ms. Carr is a lifelong learner, educator, and activist. She earned a B.A in English with a minor in Pan African Studies from California State University, Northridge, as well as an M.A. in education with a teaching credential from California State University, Los Angeles, and an M.A. in educational leadership with an administrative credential from California State University, Dominguez Hills. A strong advocate of hands-on, inquiry based learning, she involves her students in a wide array of community service and social justice activities that provide them with opportunities to use their cultural and historical experiences to solve problems and help others.