LOS ANGELOS \u2013 When most kids start their freshman year of college, it takes some time to get used to the small, cramped living spaces and to sharing a bathroom with a dozen people.<\/p>\n
But not James Ward<\/b>.<\/p>\n
The Howard University student spent much of his childhood homeless, alternating between shelters and the street in LA’s dangerous Skid Row neighborhood.<\/p>\n
“I used to hide it from people,” James<\/b> admits. “But now, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there was nothing to be embarrassed (about) to begin with.”<\/p>\n
James\u2019<\/b> journey to college began when Jessica Sutherland<\/b>, who volunteers at LA\u2019s Union Rescue Mission, found out that James<\/b> had been accepted to Howard University, but couldn\u2019t afford to go.<\/p>\n
Although loans, scholarships, and grants covered about 70 percent of his tuition, James<\/b> somehow had to come up with an additional $14,000. He thought it would never happen. That\u2019s where Jessica<\/b>, who was once homeless as well, stepped in.<\/p>\n
She created The James Fund, a website that asked people to donate to James\u2019<\/b> college efforts. Thanks to some endorsements from celebrities like rapper\/actor Common<\/b>, donations began to pour in. James<\/b> even created a Tumblr blog, Homeless to Howard, to chronicle his journey.\u00a0In just one week, James <\/b>had enough money to pay for his freshman year.<\/p>\n
For the first time in his life, he got on an airplane and headed to Washington, D.C., to begin his new life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELOS \u2013 When most kids start their freshman year of college, it takes some time to get used to the small, cramped living spaces and to sharing a bathroom with a dozen people. But not James Ward. The Howard University student spent much of his childhood homeless, alternating between shelters and the street in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}