Mar. 19th, 2009
There are so many problems today, it’s hard to know where to start. Even the Obama Administration is taking the kitchen sink approach – throw it all in there and see how far we can get. But the president has also called on Americans to get involved…a renewed call to roll up our sleeves and help clean this up. A group of award winning photojournalists are doing just that – picking one issue – the growing number of homeless teenagers – and doing what they can. Do1Thing founder Najlah Feanny Hicks says it’s working.
Mar. 12th, 2009
People Magazine published a 4 page spread in its March 23, 2009 issue about Do1Thing’s efforts to help homeless teens.
Feb. 19th, 2009
Photojournalists nationwide are showcasing their best work to aid homeless kids through Do1Thing.org. It’s a particularly well-done publicity campaign to motivate donors and volunteers to do one thing to help.
Ben Garvin, a Pioneer Press videojournalist, contributed this altogether engaging four-minute portrait of 18-year-old Russell Daye, son of drug abusers, as he tunefully makes his way through Minneapolis’ more-boring-than-mean streets
Feb. 19th, 2009
How did you spend your Valentine’s Day? Dinner and candlelight? Well, thousands of people across the country volunteered as part of Do1Thing, a New Jersey group that helps provide shelter for kids in trouble. We’ll show you a powerful video of one teen who was raped and beaten before she came to Covenant House in Newark.
Feb. 17th, 2009
Najlah Feanny Hicks won $50,000 last year for making a difference in the lives of foster children in New Jersey. Now she’s using much of that money trying to make a similar difference in the lives of homeless youths across the country.
Hicks, of Clifton, won the 2008 Russell Berrie Award for Making a Difference for her work creating the Heart Gallery — which uses professional photographers to shoot portraits of children in New Jersey’s foster-care system to help them get adopted.
Feb. 14th, 2009
When you’ve spent your life inside of a kaleidoscope – twisted and churned until it felt like the air was being squeezed out of you – what do you do when you’re finally free to breathe?
When you’ve been abused or abandoned by the very people who gave you life, how do you find a way to open your heart and learn how to hope?
Feb. 13, 2009
The addict extended her hand. There were two $1 bills, enough for bus fare to a shelter for homeless teens.
“Call me when you get there,” she said.
That runaway, Angela, will be just one of dozens of young runaways and throwaways welcoming generous visitors to Covenant House Texas Saturday. With luck, hundreds of Houstonians will drop by the campus at 1111 Lovett bearing clothing, toiletries, bus cards, gift cards or baby items as a part of a national daylong event called “Do 1 Thing.”
Feb. 13, 2009
While some of you will be out scrambling for flowers, cards or some other stand-in for your affection on Saturday, a new national non-profit group with ties to Maine is asking you to take a minute for them.
On Valentine’s Day Do 1 Thing is asking people around the country to break off from their regularly scheduled programming and think about helping the nation’s homeless teenage population.
Feb. 13, 2009
Just past the crack of dawn several days a week, Pim Van Hemmen can be seen running at a good clip through Fair Haven. But he’s running a little faster than usual these days as he heads back to his third-floor home office.
“I have a certain amount of anxiety about this,” he says. “For about an hour each day, I freak out that I’m not making any money for the first time in my life.”
Feb. 13, 2009
This Valentine’s Day people across the nation will be teaming up to help homeless kids with the Do 1 Thing campaign, and some of the nation’s best photographers and journalists will be documenting it. The project is designed to raise awareness about the estimated 1.3 million young people who live on the streets or in shelters.
Here in Houston you can participate by bringing donations of toiletry items, bus cards, clothing or diapers to the Covenant House Texas at 1111 Lovett Blvd.
(Cash donations will also be accepted, which makes the activity less free, but not less gratifying.)
Feb. 13, 2009
Candace and Solo stood outside the state’s only teen homeless shelter the other day huddled in the hope of better days to come and cold only in their resolve not to let circumstances get them down.
Down and out is a state of mind, not a condition of life, Candace keeps gently pointing out. “It’s not the thing, it’s how you look at the thing,” she says.
“This is the situation I’m in, but this situation is not me.”
Feb. 5th, 2009
Coming off the initial good vibes of the inauguration and the new incoming administration, and Barack Obama’s call for increased social involvement, I was pleasantly surprised to be made aware of an effort by a number of prominent photographers to do good and begin a ongoing effort to raise awareness of important social issues. And it begins this Valentine’s Day…
In speaking with Do1Thing’s co-founder Najlah Feanny, their initial focus will be on teenage homelessness.