People who see the film “The Florida Project” — about families living on the edge in budget motels near Disney World — are often overwhelmed with the feeling that they need to do something to help kids like six-year-old “Moonee.” To answer the “What can we do?” question for viewers, we worked with Housing Development Consortium and six partner organizations to create two advocacy tools for the film’s distributor, A24:
- An Action Guide that examines causes and solutions to family homelessness and child poverty and hunger, with a list of organizations working to solve the issues and 15 things you can do to help.
2. A Discussion Guide that you can use to stimulate discussion with your family, friends, colleagues, school and faith community and more.
These Guides premiered at the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ National Conference on Ending Family and Youth Homelessness, March 1-2 in Los Angeles, during the March 1 keynote by the film’s director, Sean Baker. UPDATE: You can watch the video of Sean Baker’s conversation with NAEH’s Nan Roman here.
Please watch “The Florida Project” if you haven’t already, and use the Guides to take action. The film is available on DVD and Blu-ray and on streaming platforms like iTunes and Amazon Video. Read more about the film in this thoughtful review by our project assistant Katie Bradley.
To find out how this project came together, you can read this news item from the Seattle University media portal.
On behalf of our co-creator HDC, we give enormous thanks to all our advocacy partners who contributed to this project: All Home King County, Building Changes, Campion Advocacy Fund, United Way of King County, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance and YWCA Seattle-King-Snohomish.
projectonfamilyhomelessness.org 