Former Foster Teen Needed Furniture. This Nonprofit Gave Her Much More (Exclusive)

• Growing up, Julisa Merwin experienced homelessness and gang life and later lived in foster care and transitional housing
• In February 2019, volunteers from the nonprofit group A Sense of Home provided furniture for Merwin’s apartment where she and her son lived
• “It made me feel like I was important,” Merwin, 30, a nursing student, tells PEOPLE. “They were like, ’This is your first home. Let’s give you a helping hand’”

Julisa Merwin, a California nursing student in Riverside, remembers a difficult period in her life from about six years ago. A single mother in her mid-20s at the time, Merwin was dealing with her toddler son Ezekiel’s health issues while attending Riverside City College and working full-time at a grocery store. She also faced the prospect of being homeless again after previously living in foster care and temporary transitional housing.

”It got to the point where I got desperate,” Merwin, 30, tells PEOPLE. “I was driving all over town and I was seeking low-income housing. So I would knock on doors and I kept on getting rejected.”

Merwin eventually secured a low-income apartment for herself and Ezekiel, now 7, but it lacked basic furnishings — an example of furniture poverty.  But then one day in February 2019, volunteers from A Sense of Home — a nonprofit organization that creates new homes for youths who have aged out of foster care — donated furniture at Merwin’s place to make it more of a proper home for herself and her child.

“Having A Sense of Home in my life made a big difference,” she says. 

Merwin had a turbulent family background.

Her grandmother was born in Honduras, where she married a U.S. service member and gave birth to Merwin’s mother. In the 1980s, the family emigrated from Honduras to Los Angeles, where Merwin was born downtown. Along with her mother and two siblings, Merwin lived at her grandmother’s apartment. Starting at age 6, she became a caretaker for her grandmother, who had split from her husband.

“She taught me how to cook clean,” Merwin recalls. “She’ll teach me how to administer her insulin [for her] diabetes, and that was very scary. Then I would accompany her to her doctor’s appointment as a translator.”

After her grandmother’s death when Merwin turned 13, she and her siblings were evicted from the apartment. She became homeless, got caught up in gang life and dropped out of school.

Then, Merwin says her mother had mental health issues, experienced a nervous breakdown and was later placed at a psychiatric facility. At 15, Merwin and her siblings entered foster care.

“I was always in survival mode since I was born into that household,” she says. “For me, [foster care] was a blessing in disguise because it got me out of homelessness and gang life. I had nothing going for me. I was a dropout. I had nowhere to go. My mom’s health was declining even more. So despite the hurdles I was facing, it adds more to my character.”

After she went back to school and graduated from high school in 2012, Merwin lived in transitional housing. “I was fortunate I had something to work with. It wasn’t stable and it was short-term,” she says, “but I had something to figure out till the next plan. I didn’t have a lot of adults in my life who were interested in teaching me the tools so I can be self-sufficient as an adult. I had to learn the hard way.”

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Merwin became pregnant at 23 and later gave birth to Ezekiel, whose father was also a former foster youth. With his health issues, Ezekiel had been to the pediatric ICU five times in addition to ER visits, according to his mother.  

“I was scared,” Merwin says. “I love my son, but I was crying because I was thinking to myself, ‘How am I going to be as a mom?’ I didn’t have the best example [with my own mother]. Some people get lonely, but as a single parent, that’s a whole other level to that.”

To find stability for her child, Merwin applied to Riverside City College School of Nursing. Her interest in nursing was inspired by her experience as a caretaker for her late grandmother.

“My grandmother would tell me, ‘I do appreciate you. I know you’re a kid,’ and she’d feel guilty,” she says. “I had to do that and my mom couldn’t get it together. So that’s when it started.”

Merwin became connected with A Sense of Home through her sister and filled out an application for “Home Creation” service in 2018. When the volunteers from A Sense of Home arrived at Merwin’s place in February 2019, they not only dropped off and assembled furniture but also decorated the apartment with curtains and shelves to make it truly a home. 

“It made me feel like I was important,” Merwin remembers. “They were like, ’This is your first home. Let’s give you a helping hand.’ ”

More than five years later, the relationship between Merwin and the organization has continued.

“They stuck around and they’re still supporting me with their ongoing support,” Merwin says. “I’m very grateful for that. We definitely feel the impact of a community. It does improve your quality of life.”

As an A Sense of Home Pay-It-Forward alumni member, Merwin has been attending the organization’s Home Creations with Ezekiel and volunteering.

“I always show my son to remind him, ‘This is what they’ve done for us,” she says. “This is what A Sense of Home is. I do believe in their mission. I am more than glad to participate in that community to help out my fellow former foster youths because I do understand the impact.”

Georgie Smith, the CEO and founder of A Sense of Home, tells PEOPLE about his nonprofit’s impact.

“It is young women like Julisa who keep us dedicated to the mission and the work to ensure that all young people like Julisa and her son have a sense of home and a sense of community,” Smith says of Merwin in a statement.

Merwin continues to exceed her goals. She is expected to graduate from Riverside City College in December and will attend Cal State Fullerton for her bachelor of science in nursing degree in January 2025. She credits A Sense of Home for providing more than just furniture.

“This is the community that impacted my life and my son’s life,” she says. “You can’t replace that. There’s something different when you have someone who sticks around consistently because I wasn’t used to that.”

“They met me at a time when I was at my lowest,” Merwin adds. “That is a contribution to the community they have created.”