Slogans like “The American Dream” and “It Takes a Village” are easy to come by but more difficult to find tangible flesh and blood examples. That is, unless you’ve met Jeanine Horowitz who puts a face and a story to those two slogans and makes them come alive in a way only a woman who has persevered the way she has can. Many years ago, Jeanine Horowitz was a single mother, jobless, homeless, lacking in education, and the last person in the world one would see as an American success story. But then Jeanine found her way to The Salvation Army’s Westwood Transitional Village.    

The Westwood Transitional Village, with its 40 units of residential housing and supporting services proved to be the life-line Jeanine and her young daughter needed. This “village” gave her the support and the direction that allowed Jeanine to go back to UCLA to finish her degree and continue that dream she had since she was 14 years old…to be a writer.

Jeanine is not only a writer, but a publisher, lecturer, and honors graduate of UCLA. The author of several children’s books, Jeanine travels the country attending book signings, readings, and giving testimony that the American Dream is alive and well and within the grasp of anyone, even people like her, if they are willing to work for it…And if places like The Salvation Army’s Westwood Transitional Village are there to lend a helping hand.

Jeanine returns to the Westwood Transitional Village on a regular basis where she conducts bible study as a way of paying back to the village and to The Salvation Army, for what the organization has done for her. You can find out more information regarding Jeanine and her published works at www.oceanfrontbooks.com.