If you enjoy organizing, help to organize and teach homeless teens how to make documentary videos with camcorders. You can start by showing the youngsters how to video record the life stories of older adults living in retirement homes or assisted living apartment complexes where classes are held in the social halls or lounges of these senior retirement living communities in Sacramento. Making reality videos as a creativity enhancer for all ages sometimes is called ethno-playography. Check out and browse my paperback book, Ethno-playography.
You start by being an adult mentor who is interested in digital photography and video recording with camcorders life stories of either the people that the teenagers interview, usually older adults, or letting the kids document their own homeless lifestyles as a video.
They'll learn how to edit the videos and post them up to the numerous free sites on the web such as Google Video for longer videos or under 10-minute recordings in video for uTube. And the kids also can make video podcasts or run their own online radio show. The records can go to Internet Archive or other places where audio and video or text can be posted.
Let the homeless kids living with their families in homeless shelters document their lives and focus on creativity, achievement and school-related projects they relate to--such as making real-life videos. They see this on reality TV shows. And homelessness in youth needs to be documented just as the teens can learn to focus themselves and their cameras.
Adult mentors are great for homeless kids learning film production or acting. But there should be a lot of creativity encouraged in the areas of writing, editing, and promotion of the film as well as in acting and leadership skills. Kids at least learned what life behind a video camera is like.
It can bring out public speaking skills in the children doing the acting. Or it can lead to volunteer work producing all different types of films while one is homeless. Whether the child grows up to host film festivals, act, do public speaking, edit films, write, promote documentaries or just takes control of life in a homeless family or in transitional housing, it's a way to channel abilities so homeless children can plan their future and realize their abilities. The whole idea for kids is to go from the streets to sustainability.
Instead of having an adult write the film, the children should be learning to do this. It may require help in the beginning, but the creativity of children needs to be brought out and encouraged. It takes a lot of talent to act in a documentary film, but job skills and leadership can be learned in childhood as part of play behavior and be educational at the same time. By also learning to write a script for a 10-minute film, the kids can learn to write real dialogue or what questions to ask in interviews for a documentary.
The latest film from the homeless children of Serna Village is a documentary about Serna Village. It's in the process of being made. When it's done, the homeless children will have had the advantage of channeling their creativity into a voice of resilience and self confidence that will go with them through life.
Picture yourself as a 12 year old living with your homeless family. Think of how much it means to get control of making a film and how you could transfer those skills into getting control of your life. Serna, at least has opportunities for homeless kids to channel their skills. Whether it's acting in a short film about the homeless life, a documentary about real life as a homeless kid in Sacramento, or putting the film together, what a homeless kid learns is to do the best you can with what you have.
At least the children are learning what it takes to produce and edit documentary films. When you put a child behind a video camera, what happens first is that self-esteem goes up. The kid feels important and good about himself. With that confidence can come leadership and job skills. With experience the child grows more confident of mastering whatever the child is good at in life.
The Teen Action Team at the Crocker Art Museum
The Teen Action Team (TAT) provides ways for young people ages 13-17 to voice their thoughts, explore ideas and become involved with the Crocker Art Museum. According to its website, through TAT, events and programs are conceived, designed and organized by teens in collaboration with the Crocker’s Education staff. To join, download the application or send an email to Emma Moore with Teen Action Team as the subject. Sign up now. You are the new Crocker.
Among Sacramento's homeless children are a troupe of film producers and actors that make documentary films on what it's like to be a homeless kid in Sacramento. Their first film, "Sweet Lemonade," is a 10-minute film on what to do when you're a local homeless kid living with a homeless family. The message is their life stories. Through Skylab Youth Development Studio, a program of Serna Village, they are trained and ready to make documentary films and are working on their second film.
For those that want to work with helping children to create documentary films or plays, a helpful paperback book on involving youth in making films or writing plays or monologues from real life stories is Ethno-playography.
The Skylab Youth Development studio is in Serna Village, which provides long-term supportive housing in Sacramento's McClellan Park for recently homeless families, according to the April 11, 2010 Sacramento Bee article by Niesha Lofing, "Homeless kids' film gains new fans."
For those interested in Serna Village, it's part of Cottage Housing, Inc., which is a nonprofit organization that also runs Quinn Cottages in midtown Sacramento. Quinn Cottages is a transitional housing community.
At least there are projects for the homeless children of homeless families that are preparing them while they are still children to help make and act in the films that document life as homeless kids. Skylab has other programs in addition to film making. They also offer bike clubs and sports. What's different about making films is that kids get used to what real-job skills are like when applied to creativity and telling either your own life story or a snapshot and intimate glimpse of what life is like in Sacramento for homeless kids.
It's all about accomplishment and achievements. And the children at the same time are channeled into constructive projects rather than dwelling on being homeless. The film offers solutions such as how to make sweet lemonade out of the lemons life has handed your homeless family when you're an innocent child born into a situation that puts you into homelessness in the present.
The film was made for Access Sacramento when they ran a contest in 2008 called, "A Place Called Sacramento." The homeless kids' film won the award for best "ensemble acting" in Access Sacramento's 2008 film festival. But the film gets shown time and time again. On April 10, 2010 the kids' film, "Sweet Lemonade" was shown at the Crocker Art Museum's Teen Film Festival.
Alison Wells, Skylab's program coordinator wrote the film with the support of the children. It's time now to teach the children to write, produce, and promote their own films. This will give them job skills they'll use later in life at all levels of leadership. Wells also coordinated film mentors and professionals to pair up with the children interested in making the film.
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