Homeless Youth Memoir, South African Development

From Homeless to Attorney General Guest: Nicole Lowe, Utah Assistant Attorney General in the Child Protection Division and author of “Never Let Me Go” Today, Nicole Lowe is a Utah Assistant Attorney General in the Child Protection Division. Many days she finds herself in court, urging a judge to terminate the parental rights of women addicted to drugs and unable to take care of their children. Twenty years ago, Nicole Lowe could easily have been one of those women. Between the ages of 13 and 16 she ran away repeatedly and lived on the streets. She did drugs and dealt drugs. She was raped and assaulted. At 17 she became pregnant. But then she turned things around, finished her high school degree, went on to get a law degree at the University of Utah and last year founded a Homeless Youth Legal Clinic in Salt Lake City. Now she’s written the whole unlikely, but inspiring, story down in a memoir called, “Never Let Me Go.”  Liberation and Development in South Africa Guest: Leslie Hadfield, PhD, Professor of African History at BYU and author of “Liberation and Development: Black Consciousness Community Programs in South Africa” How best to help people in need? Whether it’s a group of refugees just arrived from a far-off place or an inner-city neighborhood wracked with poverty or a village in Africa battling hunger and disease, what should be the primary goal of efforts to help? Is it best to lift people out of poverty? To help them lift themselves? Should improving the material situation of people’s lives be the primary goal? Is there a level of \_psychological \_improvement that ought to be the priority?  These questions are actively debated wherever governments, nonprofits and community activists are engaged in development work. It’s happening in your community and it’s happening on the other side of the planet. This hour we glean some lessons from a fascinating period of development in South Africa when a group of black students came up with an approach that was ahead of its time. Leslie Hadfield writes about