The Office of Student Life and the Kern County Library provided an event titled “One Book Kickoff,” with a media conference at the Campus Center and a resource fair at the Renegade Crossroads to discuss the book “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America,” written by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer.

The media conference was a collection of five speakers at the Campus Center that took place on Sept. 13 to introduce what One Book is and to give insight to personal connections to the book.

One of the speakers, Emmanuel Limaco, 32, is an engineering student at Bakersfield College.

Limaco was originally from LA and moved to Bakersfield in 2007, but got involved in gang activities and ended up getting arrested.

He said, “I was a gang member in my younger days and I committed a crime here in Bakersfield involving firearms; I shot two people and I turned myself in.”

“I went to prison in 2008, and when I was released in 2012, I was not allowed to leave the county, so I had to stay in Bakersfield essentially.”

After he was released from prison, he spent two years afterward in housing for reintegrating inmates. After that, he was homeless for about five months, he says.

Limaco took his first semester at BC in 2016. He took a construction class and some remedial classes and discovered that he wanted to be an engineering student.

He said, “I started coming to college here in 2016, and within my first couple of weeks being here at BC, I did find housing, steady housing, and I actually did find a way to pay for it. It wasn’t easy.”

Limaco said that he got help from programs at BC such as the MESA program, EOP&S, financial aid, and the Renegade Pantry.

“I remember having to rely on different pantries, not only here at Bakersfield College, but throughout the Bakersfield community just so I had something to eat at home because I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have any income; I didn’t have any way to support myself,” Limaco said.

Limaco eventually was able to get a job at BC in order to pay for his needs so he could continue attending BC.

He said, “I was blessed within about five months of being a student at BC to actually being employed by Bakersfield College. I became one of the coordinators for the Renegade pantry which, oddly enough, was the same facility that supplied me with food.”

At the Renegade Crossroads there was also a resource fair in which local agencies like the California Veteran’s Assistance Foundation, CAPK WIC, Department of Child Support Services, Department of Human Services, Planned Parenthood, Catholic Charities, Greater Bakersfield Legal Assistance, California State University of Bakersfield Fab Club, and the Renegade Pantry were all there in order to inform students about how they can help fight poverty.