November is recognized as Youth Homelessness, Outreach, Prevention, and Education (HOPE) Month.
The Chalk Walk is a way agencies like Anchor House are promoting Youth HOPE Month. The idea is to ‘chalk the walk’ and write inspiring messages and contact information for resources like Anchor House that offer critical services to youth experiencing or at-risk of experiencing homelessness in the community.
Our crew took a new spin on the Chalk Walk this year, not doing a physical walk but created the Chalk Walk dance demonstrated in the music video. The video is more than dance moves, rapping skills and creativity. It shows our team’s passion as they work to prevent and end youth homelessness.
Youth HOPE Month is a public awareness campaign led by the National Runaway Safeline (NRS) that shines a light on youth homelessness, educates the public about the role they can play in preventing and ending youth homelessness, and increases visibility of the critical services offered to vulnerable youth nationwide.
According to Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, approximately 4.2 million young people ages 13-25 experience some sort of homelessness in the United States each year, with considerably more experiencing crises that put them at risk of facing similar housing insecurity.
At Anchor House, our team chalked our walk at the Shelter in honor of Youth HOPE Month with inspirational messages and phone numbers to connect youth to assistance and support (see photos below). And then there was the Chalk Walk dance and video shoot. Not only did it show how passionate our staff is about ending youth homelessness, it showed how talented they are!
The video was shot on November 14, which was Wear Green Day, to show support for Youth HOPE Month. This was truly a collaborative effort among Anchor House staff to make this happen from songwriting to choreography to videography.
