Do1Thing Blog

Tyra Banks was moved by the Do1Thing project and after a recent taping of The Tyra Banks Show, Banks donated a wardrobe of clothes to homeless teens at Covenant House in New York City.

We’re grateful to Tyra for doing1thing and we hope you’ll find create ways to do1thing as well.

About Tyra: As an icon in the international, cultural, and entertainment communities, Tyra Banks has broken down barriers to become one of the most admired and watched individuals in media today.

Banks is on a mission to provide avenues for others to reach their ultimate goals. In her words: “I’m passionate about inspiring people to fulfill their own dreams and fantasies through entertainment that is engaging, uplifting, and of course, fun! This is my dream realized.”

Have you guys been watching those awesome videos on the do1thing multimedia page?

Well, here’s the man who literally spent hundreds of hours editing video interviews and helping other photographers put their videos together. He edited images, produced videos, troubleshooted technical issues and was an all around great guy always willing to help anyone.

If you ever wondered if there’s still an old fashioned good guy out there? Well, we found one. THANK YOU Curt, Penn State and all the interns across the country.

A steady stream of cars keeps pulling up to drop off donations of clothing, toiletries and gift cards. One resident is waving a banner, cheerleader style, flagging cars passing by. Others are taking turns greeting people, unloading cars and rolling carts away. The carts are filling up faster than the kids can get them emptied out.

Everyone from Girl Scouts to professors has shown their love in a big way today. One girl offered personalized heart art to the residents and staff collecting donations, while donors toured the grounds and got to know the residents a little bit better. Some of the donors even took snapshots of the day’s events. Maybe we’ll see them on the Do1Thing Web site.

Sara pushes Christalyn as they race to return a bin for another round of donations. (Photo by Smiley N. Pool)

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?

When you’ve been careening in and out of the lives of adults who never keep you around long enough to remain anything but strangers or enemies, what happens when you’re finally flung out for good, homeless, and you discover that concrete isn’t the hardest thing about the streets?

Read the entire story here: ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

Who says newspapers are dead? Almost every vehicle that drives up came because they saw the story in the Houston Chronicle. Staff have been busy answering the phone with callers wanting to get Covenant House’s address. The second largest group brought donations because they saw an article in the University of Houston’s Daily Cougar (or they were notified of Do1Thing by the enterprising reporter/PR maven Amina Rivera).

The Fox26 story that ran earlier in the week generated a few calls, said Carolyn Garrard, PR director for Covenant House, and many church groups responded to the call for donations. But by far, the largest response came from newspaper readers.

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.”

Words help to explain the plight of the homeless teens, but Najlah Feanny Hicks, one of the masterminds of the project, believes photographs are more powerful still.

That’s why she’s enlisted the help of award-winning photojournalists to show the faces of teens at sites all over the country. Houston photographers include Smiley N. Pool of the Houston Chronicle and Dave Einsel, Robert Seale and Todd Spoth.

All day Saturday, their photos will be streaming online at www.do1thing.org.

Angela, now 20, her friend Corderro and other young people from Houston should be easy to find on the Web site.

Aspirations

Corderro, 19, wants to be an actor, a pastry chef and a restaurateur. For the moment, though, he’s busing tables and making plans to enroll at Houston Community College.

If he seems an unlikely resident of Covenant House, he is not. “I used to run away when things didn’t go right,” Corderro said.

Hicks, a New York-based photographer who has donated hundreds of hours of her own time to the project, said that today, Valentine’s Day, 1.3 million young people are living on the streets or in shelters.

“We’re going to spend billions of dollars telling each other how much we care,” Hicks said. “Why not do one thing for someone, a young person, less fortunate than ourselves?”

Do 1 Thing is Hicks’ third campaign to help disadvantaged children through photography.

In 2005, she and a colleague enlisted the help of photographers to showcase several hundred foster children in New Jersey. Over time, 160 of those kids were adopted.

In 2007, Hicks organized a photography exhibit featuring 100 older children who faced the prospect of living in foster homes, group homes or shelters until they reached the age of maturity.

Every year, Hicks says, that happens to 25,000 young adults nationwide, and thousands of them wind up on the streets.

Do 1 Thing, she hopes, will get the public involved with young people like Angela and Corderro.

Inspirations

In his small dorm room at Covenant House, Corderro keeps pictures of his siblings, books by Donald Trump and President Barack Obama, and a pencil sketch of the president.

Corderro looks like a smaller, younger Obama, and Corderro, like Obama, was raised by his mom.

“I wish I could talk to him,” Corderro said wistfully. “I’d ask him for advice.”

In Angela’s dorm room are scrapbooks, photos of her little sister, and life-size plastic heads with lots of hair.

Future plans

In just a few weeks, Angela is going to start working on her beautician’s license, and one day she hopes to own her own beauty shop.

Her short life has been tough so far. But when she walks out of Covenant House, Angela sees downtown, skyscrapers and opportunities.

What’s important, she says, is not where you’ve been, but where you’re going.

claudia.feldman@chron.com

To view the chron.com photo gallery click here

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.

So, yeah, drop the whole chocolates and naughty underwear bit for a minute.

Do 1 Thing is the brainchild of photographers and other journalists from around the country, trying to bring attention to a problem that sometimes gets little or no recognition. On Feb. 14, the project is kicking off as photographers around the country spread out to document the young people living just outside the margins, sometimes right in broad daylight. As the people behind Do 1 Thing point out, homelessness for young people can take many forms; it doesn’t just mean living on the streets, but sometimes couch-surfing from one friend’s place to another.

Unlike the adult homeless population, teens can have a different set of needs, including expanded medical and education services.

Around Maine, photographers, including students from The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies will be taking photos of homeless youth and giving the “A Day in the Life” treatment to people who are sometimes referred to as “falling in between the cracks.”

Alexandra Daley-Clark, director of photographer relations (or photographer wrangler as she says), says the idea was for people to use whatever resources and skills they have, writing, shooting photography or video, to draw people’s attention to the issue of teen homelessness.

Daley-Clark is a photographer with years of experience working for different publications, including Newsweek. She now lives in Saco and has her own studio, working on commercial photography as well as weddings and other events.

The Valentine’s Day push serves two purposes, documenting the issue of poverty and homelessness and using the results of that to get people motivated to act, she said. So even if you’re not a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, you can find a way to Do 1 Thing in your area, which can be something as easy as donating slightly used clothes, toiletries or non-perishable food to shelters and other aid groups.

Daley-Clark says it is just the beginning, as the Do 1 Thing project will continue to try and give a voice and face to the young homeless. While it may not seem like a lot, it can start to add up if enough people get involved.

Looking for ways to help, you can contact some of these agencies around Maine or find a shelter near you.

Portland: The Preble Street Resource Center

York County: Caring Unlimited

Franklin, Oxford and Androscoggin counties: Community Concepts

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.)

After you make your donation you can check out the coverage at do1thing.org. (Checking out the coverage is guaranteed 100 percent free. Unless of course you then feel motivated to donate even more money.)

Do 1 Thing
Covenant House Texas
1111 Lovett Blvd
Saturday, Feb. 14
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

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It’s Black History Month, and there are lots of fun things for kids to do. This Saturday the Houston Public Library will be celebrating the Women of the Blues as part of their African American Traditions in Music presentation.

The Web site says the concert is geared for adults, but MomHouston believes appreciation for legendary singers such as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone can occur at any age.

Houston-native Tweed Smith, the woman singer in the band WAR, will be presenting.

Other library branches will be holding similar presentations with the music of African-American legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sam Cooke. Check the Web site for details and locations.