Meet Dewanna
Meet Dewanna, Cara participant class of October 2021 and Cleanslate crew member. For Giving Tuesday, she shared her journey with us so far and how she found her second chance. Click the video and read along to hear Dewanna narrate her story.
Listen to Dewanna share her Cara journey with us.
“Hi, my name is Dewanna and I joined Cara in the beginning of October 2021. Before I came to Cara, I would say I was stressed. I was not motivated at all, I was at a standstill in my life. And it was like I was going nowhere, until I came to Cara.
I heard about Cara on another program that I was working for, CTA, The Second Chance program. I heard about Cara and Cleanslate. So I decided to, you know, come to Cara and join their program. They had a lot of benefits, they help you get a job. And that’s what I was looking for, you know, a fresh start. And it’s been good to me since I’ve been working here. Really has.
There was a turning point for me, because I had ran into some financial barriers and stuff like that. And after I ran into those financial barriers, I ended up coming to Cleanslate and working everything out, they helped me with a lot of different things like housing programs, background checks, background cleaning – they helped me with a lot of stuff that I was going through before I came to Cara, they helped me with my financial situation, too, a lot. So that’s where I’m at with it right now. I mean, I’m not saying I’m all the way there, but I’m in the middle of it, now that I joined Cleanslate. They helped me with a lot of things that I was dealing with financially, especially housing. And now that I’m with Cleanslate, I feel less stressed. And I feel motivated to go to work every day, I’m determined.
My experience at Cara impacts a lot of my decisions that make today because before, I wasn’t big on decision making, it just was going to come and go, come and go. When I got to Cleanslate, and going to workshops, and they was teaching me a lot of stuff like how to be forgiving, how to become unstressed, how to be self confident. I think I learned a lot of them from going to those Cara workshops. Now that I’ve been working here, I’m motivating myself, to get up every day, every morning, to go do something that’s helping the community out there that needs it, even it’s my community or not my community.
“I’m motivating myself, to get up every day, every morning, to go do something that’s helping the community out there that needs it, even it’s my community or not my community.“
The advice that I give others that’s in this situation that I was in before I came to Cara is to just keep striving to get to where you’re trying to go, be self confident, be self motivated, be dependable, you know, be reliable, I think you have to struggle to get to where you’re going. You have to take baby steps. And they should focus more on themselves rather than focusing on other people and what other people have going on, and try to get it for yourself.
I think every everyone deserves a second chance in life. And you know, some people mess it up, some people don’t. And the donators and the people in the community that’s helping us out, I thank them for doing that, to give me a second chance. I think they should help us, you know, just to see like, “if they want this second chance, let’s give it to them. Let’s give them a second chance. Let’s see what they can do with this second chance. Let’s help them out a little bit”.”
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