Seattle U students Haley Lewis (L) and Tiana Quitugua (R) model their new t-shirts featuring the artwork Haley created for “@home.” Photo by Catherine Hinrichsen.
Tomorrow night, a powerful new documentary will have its broadcast premiere, on Chicago’s WTTW-TV, Channel 11 (PBS), 9 p.m. Central. So, this is a great time to reflect on one of the highlights of our year: hosting the remarkable e-activist Mark Horvath for the Seattle premiere of the film about him, “@home.”
We were thrilled to bring Mark and the film’s director, Susanne Suffredin, here in May for the premiere, which kicked off another highlight of our year, the Hack to End Homelessness.
Watching the film in prep for the screening, our student Haley Jo Lewis was inspired to create an illustration about Mark. The film’s producers, the Kindling Group, liked the art so much that they used it to print t-shirts for their outreach campaign. The shirts arrived last week! Haley and our project assistant and recent SU grad, Tiana Quitugua, were happy to model the shirts; see the photo above.
Haley tweeted her illustration at Mark in April, and he took notice!
Seattle University will join Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, First Lady Trudi Inslee and nearly 40 different partner organizations today in a pledge to make family and youth homelessness rare, brief and one-time in our state by 2020.
It’s part of a celebration of the Washington Youth & Families Fund (WYFF). The fund is expanding its focus to embrace youth and young adults, building on 10 years of groundbreaking collaboration that is improving how homeless families and youth are served.
Seattle University’s President Stephen V. Sundborg, S.J., will be one of the signatories on the WYFF Memorandum of Understanding to be signed by business, government and community leaders today.
Seattle University President Stephen V. Sundborg, S.J., joins dignitaries signing the pledge to make family and youth homelessness rare, brief and one-time.
“Education is a critical piece of the puzzle in addressing homelessness. We believe every child deserves a place to call home, yet more than 30,000 school-aged children in Washington state – from kindergarten through high school – were reported as homeless in 2012-2013,” Fr. Sundborg said. “These children and their families need support to keep the children in school and to help the families succeed. The Washington Youth & Families Fund has been providing that support since 2004, and is an important investment in the future of the families in our state.”
The fund, established in 2004 by the Washington State Legislature and managed by Building Changes, is a unique partnership among funders, governments and service providers to share solutions and streamline resources for homeless youth and families.
Our project is proud to be one of the many Seattle University initiatives working to fight homelessness and poverty, and to join partners across the state in working to make family and youth homelessness rare, brief and one-time..
By Perry Firth, project coordinator, Seattle University’s Project on Family Homelessness and school psychology graduate student
Caption: This poster from the conference just about sums it up: all children, including those who are homeless, deserve equal access to educational opportunity. Image from NAEHCY.org
As a first-time attendee at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAECHY) annual conference in Kansas City, October 25-28, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
But the opportunity to learn about where the field of “homeless education” is going, and what that might mean for the work we do on the Project on Family Homelessness, was just too exciting and important to miss.
It turns out my premonition was correct. The conference sparked ideas that I was able to apply very soon after my return, in a discussion about a local school district that is struggling to support its children who are homeless. Continue reading →
Franklin and Sherry Gilliard, the Tacoma family whose story aired on StoryCorps Nov. 28.
We’re feeling grateful for the bounty of heartfelt stories that Puget Sound families told StoryCorps this summer, and amazingly, a second story from our project has been selected for national broadcast. The story aired Friday morning, Nov. 28 during StoryCorps’ “National Day of Listening” on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
The Gilliard family first recorded their story at CCS in July. Here’s the “farewell and thanks” sign that CCS staff posted on their front door that week.
The story, “Once Homeless, Family Feels ‘Blessed To Wake Up Another Day,'”features the Gilliard family of Tacoma, Wash., who first recorded their story at CCS in July. StoryCorps producer Eve Claxton heard their story and invited them back for an additional recording in early November, also at CCS, and from that recording the story was produced. Here’s the official description of the story:
Sherry Gilliard talks with her husband Franklin Gilliard about losing their business and subsequently their home after the economic crash, their experience of becoming homeless and living in a shelter with their three children, and the love and faith that brought them through these hardships. The family is now in transitional housing in Tacoma, Wash.
“Friday is our ‘National Day of Listening,’ and for that broadcast we always try to air pieces that embody goodness, resilience and love,” Eve said. “The Gilliards are a very special family and everyone here is excited to share their story on such a special day.”
The American Institutes for Research and The National Center on Family Homelessness came out with a report last week revealing that a staggering 2.5 million children living in the United States are homeless. That’s 1 of every 30 children in America – an 8% increase nationally from 2012 to 2013.
The report ranks all fifty states (and the District of Columbia) according to their performance in four domains related to child homelessness: extent of child homelessness, risk for child homelessness, child well-being, and state policy and planning. As you can see in the infographic below, Washington ranks fairly high in child well-being and policy and planning, but middle-of-pack when it comes to risk factors for homlessness, and low in extent of child homelessness due to our very high number of homeless children.
So, what can we do as people of faith? The report points to the need for safe…
This is a re-post from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance blog. We’re “loaning” our project assistant, Haley Jo Lewis, to the Alliance to help with communications work such as preparing for Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day, Feb. 17, 2015. Check out some of Haley’s other work here on this blog, like her edited StoryCorps piece, “Stepping Into Homelessness,” and her review of the SIFF premiere of our American Refugees films. Haley also wrote about the Seattle premiere of the film “@home” at the Hack to End Homelessness, and the filmmakers loved her cartoon of Mark Horvath so much that they plan to use it on fund-raising t-shirts to support screenings of the film.
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A new face at the Housing Alliance
Posted November 6, 2014 – 11:40am
Haley Jo Lewis, Communications Intern
My name is Haley Jo Lewis, and I am excited to be Washington Low Income Housing Alliance’s new Communications Intern! I am originally from sunny San Diego and moved to Seattle three years ago to attend Seattle University where I am currently in my senior year studying communications.
During my time at Seattle University, I have become aware of many issues in our community and have become engaged in social justice work in a variety of platforms. I have both volunteered with and worked for the Seattle University Youth Initiative as a member of the Redhawk Reading Corp. For this program, I volunteered as a reading tutor in elementary classrooms, where students from low-income families received extra support in learning to read. This work was extremely rewarding. Seeing the progress students made throughout the year because of our program made me realize how possible it is to create change in our communities. Building meaningful relationships with program participants is something I’ll always cherish.
When I saw an opportunity in the Communication Department for work at the Project on Family Homelessness, I couldn’t turn it down. I have always been interested in the issue of homelessness. I’m particularly interested in changing the negative public perceptions of individuals experiencing homelessness. I hope that, someday in the future, we can humanize the issue and build a grand-scale social movement to end homelessness.
My first experience working in coordination with the Housing Alliance was at Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day 2014. I met their “communications guy,” Joaquin, and others from the Housing Alliance and attended a workshop on using social media for advocacy led by Joaquin and members of the local advocacy organization Firesteel. It was my first experience at Advocacy Day, and I was pleased to find that both the workshops as well as the legislative meetings were easy to follow. Although I had very little prior knowledge of the legislative process, I found that by the end of the day I had a better understanding of how it all works, and I felt like I had really made an impact in being there. I am now so excited to attend Advocacy Day 2015. I knew right from the beginning that the Housing Alliance knew what they were doing!
As a Communications Intern, I am excited to assist in social media work, research, data analysis, digital design, and many other tasks for various Housing Alliance staff members. I hope my skills will help keep the Housing Alliance running smoothly and effectively. I also hope to be a bridge between them and the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness on various projects, keeping these two awesome organizations in communication with one another, supporting one another’s work, and working together to end homelessness.
I am eager to gain experience in the communications sector of nonprofit and advocacy work and am honored to be given this opportunity! Hopefully I’ll see you at this coming Advocacy Day on Tuesday, February 17, 2015 in Olympia.
Photos: Top: Me at Advocacy Day 2014 (Photo courtesy of Catherine Hinrichsen). Bottom (left to right): Me, Graham Pruss, and Joaquin Uy at Advocacy Day 2014 (Photo courtesy of Catherine Hinrichsen).
Haley Jo Lewis created the “Stepping Into Homelessness” audio piece on her laptop, using GarageBand.
Our project assistant, Seattle U senior Haley Jo Lewis, recently revealed yet another talent. Project manager Catherine asked Haley if she knew how to do audio editing. Haley said, “I like GarageBand.”
So, we asked her to see what she could do with a CD copy of a StoryCorps recording that Catherine had done with one of our project’s key partners, Vince Matulionis of United Way of King County.
The package, “Stepping Into Homelessness: Domestic Violence and the Power of Empathy”:
Gives us insight into what drives people like Vince, one of Seattle’s leaders in ending homelessness, and what keeps him doing the sometimes-frustrating work.
Supports October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month activities, on which we’ve collaborated with Firesteel and the YWCA Seattle-King-Snohomish County. (Emma’s earlier NFL & DV series was part of this too.)
Launches us into the next phase of the StoryCorps project, in which we’ll be working with Firesteel to produce potentially several dozen audio pieces like this.
Here’s the re-posted piece from Firesteel. Check it out! And way to go, Haley! Continue reading →
Drew Christie, as seen by Seattle University student Haley Jo Lewis.
Congratulations to our Film Fellow Drew Christie, winner of a coveted Genius Award from The Stranger! At the ceremony Saturday night, Oct. 18, Drew was named as winner of the Film category for his impressive body of work, including more “op-docs” for the New York Times than any other artist.
The nominations were announced in June, just after Drew had completed his work on “The Beast Inside,” the animated short film he co-directed with Amy Enser (produced by Lindy Boustedt). That film is the main reason we were rooting for him.
In the nomination write-up, Charles Mudede of The Stranger wrote:
Emma Lytle with her boyfriend, Ricky Martinez. She’s a lifelong Seahawks fan, but has recently been dismayed by the domestic violence incidents in the NFL.
It”s hard to believe, but when we first conceived of this blog series for Firesteel in late July, one of the most notorious, most-shared videos in history hadn’t even surfaced yet. All we knew was that last spring, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice had been seen in a surveillance video dragging the unconscious body of his then-fiancee Janay Palmer out of an elevator — an apparent domestic violence incident. We didn’t know yet what had happened inside the elevator.
As the National Football League (NFL) dithered about trying to decide how to handle that situation, we found out our project assistant, Emma Lytle, is a true-blue Seahawks fan. And we thought it might be fascinating to look at the incident through her eyes. So, we asked her to share her perspective via a Firesteelblog post for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Since then, it’s been a roller coaster. The shocking video* from inside the elevator was leaked — but why did it take so long and when did the NFL know about it? What’s the appropriate response to these incidents? Continue reading →
Like Infographics? Interested in visual representations of some of the issues that can accompany childhood homelessness and poverty? Then take a peek at the infographics we recently created for our seven-part series, “Homelessness and Poverty in the Public Education System.”
Learn more by reading the series on Firesteel’s website here.
We are always interested in how homelessness, poverty and stress affect child development and adult outcomes. Recent research into these relationships for our seven-part series “Homelessness and Poverty in the Public Education System” yielded not only great insights, but, thanks to the talents of our digital designer Krista Kent, nine new infographics. Continue reading →
projectonfamilyhomelessness.org 