Home Safe by Ernel Martinez and Shira Walinsky, in progress. Photo by Steve Weinik.

The journey2home project operated on multiple levels to succeed. We worked to share youth stories with the larger community via art, to attract media attention to our participants and provider partners, and finally to de-stigmatize the pursuit of resources and to edify youth participants through a variety of experiences, including job training.

We have committed to directing the project’s spending towards the population we are serving. Through our various programs, initiatives and artworks, over ninety individuals were paid by journey2home, and more than half of these wereyouth participants who have experienced homelessness or housing insecurity. journey2home provided regular, 20-40 hour/week jobs to 26participants, and an additional 56 participants received stipends of more than $100.

These individuals painted murals, attended workshops, and built porches, bookshelves and tables for the pop-up gathering space; they made music, created films, MCed events, expressed their stories, performed, taught, spoken, cleaned, photographed, drilled, composed, cut, designed, debated, conversed; through all of this, they had a vital impact on a project which could never have been the same without their input.