www.tinyurl.com/EvacTedTalk 4 Reginald Boston Plato's "Allegory of The Cave" describes a world where prisoners have been chained in a cave all their lives and therefore bo***ge and darkness is all they know. That is until one day a former prisoner descends into the cave to liberate a prisoner, leading him up out of the cave into the sun which literally enlightens his understanding of the
possibilities of the world and his very existence. This liberated prisoner is now only empowered with the awareness to positively re-imagine his destiny, he is entrusted with the responsibility of descending back into the cave to liberate the still-oppressed- to EVACuate them to the hope of the light. This allegory parallels our experience as youth advocates. Sometimes one's Story, the difficult experiences that have shaped one's life, can create a cave existence- we become stuck in the belief that things must always be the way they've always been. The EVAC is the "CAVE" spelled backwards and that is what we see our responsibility as- to reverse the cave beliefs that the world engrains into the hearts of the oppressed by evacuating through the truth of the hope and possibilities of their destiny. Emergency evacuation is the immediate and urgent movement of people away from the threat or actual occurrence of a hazard. While volunteering at a Jacksonville high school with a teacher and friend of mine who's name I will keep confidential, I often heard her tell her students, "get out of the CAVE". The term was understood to represent a lie, a bad place, bad thinking, or a bad attitude. The phrase was understood as a call to come out of hiding, face the truth and all the pains that comes with it, and grab hold of your potential, responsibilities and a helping hand. This page exist to be a helping hand for those that would reach out.
