Father Greg

Father Greg is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries. He is an American Jesuit priest. Homeboy Industries provides jobs to people who are seeking to get out of gangs and do something that makes them proud. The largest number of homeboys and homegirls are young adults who have a lack of support and care from their families. Homeboys provide job training and gives free services. Therefore, these homegirls and homeboys can stand for themselves and help others gangs who are in that situation. Homeboy Industries help to bring positive change in an individual's life and the help of this organization makes a big difference in other people’s lives who is seeking help.

Many of the members of Homeboy were gang members. Since the gang members do not have support from their families, the young adults join a gang where everyone supports each other. For example, if someone beat up their gang member, then their gang will take revenge or do something to that person and support the victims. When the gang members are young, they do not have anything to lose or care about, so they join the gang and do illegal things like use drugs, commit violence and more. At a young age, they ended up in prison. However, many gang members started realizing that they needed to change for the better. Like Mohandas Gandhi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Many gang members get help from Homeboy Industries and other organizations. At Homeboy Industries, they welcome gang members with open arms. No one judges what happened to you or what your background is. Homeboy always gives support no matter who you are and what has happened in your life.

Homeboy provides jobs for gang members. Many times gang members are not ready for change, but Homeboy Industries are always there to help when they are ready. Homeboy Industries has helped thousands of gang members to get counseling, remove tattoos, find jobs, and move forward with positive changes in life. For example, large numbers of gang members started going to school, and now they are confident in themselves.

From Father Greg’s speeches, I learned that everyone makes mistakes, but from those mistakes we can learn the lesson to not repeat the same mistakes. The help Homeboy Industries provides makes a big difference in gang members’ lives. We should spend money on job training and schooling, instead of prisons.