See It: The Community being helped

It's time to start looking at the truth. Project Invoke will create a short movie completely made by youth. We will then publish the DVD locally to give a reality check to people who choose to think of our homeless youth as a "problem". This movie has been completely made by youth who have had a past of homelessness or poverty.

The mayor of our city (Eugene OR) has already been interviewed and as such we have a large community support for this project.

Homeless folks, drug dealers or "punk teenagers" how many labels could you fit into a sentence or even an article? How much more of a cop out do we need then these previous accusations?

We start to forget that these "punk teenagers," are children who need us. They fall under our labels to survive, and they stay there because there is no helping hand. These children only want to be given the choices and opportunities of any other teen. Our picture perfect society doesn't like the ideal of homeless youth, as if they shouldn't exist.

People don't want to acknowledge that there are simply not enough resources for the majority of homeless youth to survive. It's easy to look at a middle-aged man who is homeless and pass judgment, but how can you pass judgment on a homeless youth who has no family, no opportunity and in most cases can't legally work? We expect them to go to school, and do their homework, but they aren't worried about getting to math class on time. The homeless youth in our community are more concerned with surviving day to day. This video reflects this truth in a passive way.

See It: The Community being helped

Although right now, I am only organizing a specific project, Girls Helping Girls, into the future I would like to develop this project into a small nonprofit organization that partners girls in the United States- particularly and initially, girls on Action Teams within the social change organizations of which I am a part- with girls in schools, orphanages, and community organizations in developing countries to jointly identify problems in their communities and develop service projects to address those issues. The two teams would work together to determine a problem that affects both of their communities- it doesn’t matter if one more than the other or by a differing mechanism- and then collaborate in a vibrant cultural exchange by email, snail mail, and phone to offer each other support and ideas to develop viable social change projects in their respective communities. The Millennium Development Goals are one puissant example of the slew of problems that plague people around the world and are not confined to a specific region or nation of the globe. My organization would facilitate team communication and exchanges and provide educational materials and background about the global issue that they select to confront to aid the girls in their research and project development. At the end of the year-long service year- which I hope eventually to culminate on Global Youth Service Day, usually at the end of April- the girls will receive certificates of achievement and recognition for their work.