SchoolHouse Connection
UNCOVERING THE TRUTH
Challenge
Every year, millions of children, youth, and young adults experience homelessness. And yet, when we think about our neighbors experiencing homelessness, we rarely think of children. In part, it’s because we don’t see the many children living on their own in motels, in cars, temporarily with other people, or in other unsafe situations. And it’s also because the conversation around homelessness almost never centers around children. The result is an adult-centric polity landscape that doesn’t address the unique experiences of youth. For example, young people are required to attend school, they don’t necessarily have access to their own vital documents, and many don’t have trusted adults in their lives.
Approach
SchoolHouse Connection (SHC) turned to RALLY because of our experience in communications around both education and homelessness. Our joint goal was to create an understanding for the critical role that education plays in overcoming youth homelessness. We purposely avoided an approach built around more statistics, analysis, and policy speak. We also rejected a narrative approach that presented schools as either the potential hero—able to do it all—or the big bad villain—failing our children. Instead, we focused on the human aspects of youth homelessness—coming to school hungry, in the same clothes as yesterday, and exhausted.
We outlined how schools are currently helping and how they could, with more support and better policies, do even more to help address these challenges. Within this new narrative, SHC was positioned strongly as an expert and trusted partner to shape policies and support both school leaders and homeless youth. While there is still work to do to truly overcome child and youth homelessness, there is now increased national attention on true solutions.
Related Work
RALLY has extensive experience advocating for education equity and solutions to homelessness. In our education work, we have partnered with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL); Ed Trust; and Raikes Foundation, among others, to advance educational equity by defending against anti-equity efforts and promoting innovative student-centered educational approaches. RALLY also developed campaigns in three West Coast cities to build long-term support for solutions to homelessness.