Street roots., November 10, 2017, Page 13, Image 13

Street Roots • Nov. 10-16, 2017
Culture
Page 13
Stories of a lifetime
Outside the Frame’s Annual Gala premiers original film s
by and about youths experiencing homelessness.
BY SARAH HANSELL
S T A F F W R IT E R
he opening scene: 23-year-old Jacob
Averi speaking at his mother’s
memorial, his sister at his lefthand
side. His mother was a drug addict
throughout his life.
His eulogy addresses her directly. His first
sentence: “I forgive you.”
“I don’t want you to miss us or be sad or
feel guilty anymore,” he said at the memorial.
“Just be at peace. You deserve it.”
The scene is from “Hairapy,” a short film
shot this past summer starring Averi, a
former program participant of Outside the
Frame, an organization that empowers
homeless and marginalized youth through
teaching them filmmaking and bringing those
films to audiences across the city.
“Hairapy” and other short films created by
and with the youth participants of Outside
the Frame will be debuted at the their
Annual Gala on Nov. 13. The event’s theme
is Leaving Home.
“I think people that haven’t experienced
homelessness, they think leaving home is
like, ‘oh, go West, young man, you decided to
leave your mom and dad’s house and strike
out, good luck,”’ said Nili Yosha, Outside the
Frame’s founder and executive director. “But
if a young person chooses to leave home
early, it’s because the streets are better than
where they left, and that’s kind of what these
stories show.”
Leaving home is a reality Averi knows all
too well. He became homeless within 6
months of aging out of the foster system at
18, but it wasn’t the first time. He had been
homeless on and off growing up with his
mother and sister, and Child Protective
Services (CPS) had been involved since he
T
——
A scene from “Hairapy,” a short film by Jacob Averi with Outside the Frame, a film program
fo r youths experiencing homelessness.
was 5. When we was 14, he and his sister
were removed from their mother’s home and
put in foster care.
“I got home from school and my mom was
crying,” he said. “She opened the door and
she was like, ‘you’re not supposed to be
here.’”
CPS had planned to pick up him and his
sister straight from school, not allowing them
to say goodbye or even pack a bag.
At 18, he had no place to go.
“I didn’t really have, obviously, any family I
could rely on,” he said. “I didn’t have any
resources available to me.”
But he did already know about Outside In,
a health and social services organization for
homeless youths, and was able to find shelter
there. At the time, Outside the Frame was a
small program at Outside In called Guerrilla
Theatre. One of his friends talked him into
trying it. He laughed as he explained that she
bailed but he stayed - “forever.”
“A lot of it was just having somebody
believe in you,” he said. “You know, also just
that trust that you kind of build with people
when they’re giving you cameras that are
thousands of dollars and they’re not really
worried about it.
“It’s kind of weird because we call them
youth and whatever, but that’s just a
classification. But I don’t think I had ever
been treated more like an adult or more like
a person without being looked down upon or
people just expecting me to fuck up.”
Outside the Frame now offers a three-
week summer intensive where young people
learn all the ins and outs of filmmaking, from
filming, to audio and lights, to screenwriting
and character development. They also offer
weekly workshop that provide a consistent
and supportive framework for youth to hone
their skills.
The organization also does outreach and
education, showing films to varied audiences,
from social work students to high schoolers
to kids in juvenile detention.
“It’s life-changing,” said Yosha. “It’s a
program they want to participate in that
gives so much creative freedom and control,
versus a lot of the prescriptive programs, like
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‘here let’s take you and civilize you. This is:
‘no, here, come and get some tools that you
don’t have access to and express and create
and teach us.’”
Averi got the job at New Seasons, is a peer
mentor at Outside the Frame, and has a
“semi-steady” housing situation, he says. He
continues to create films with Outside the
Frame, and is a strong proponent of Housing
First solutions to address homelessness -
quickly providing people stable and
permanent housing without barriers. He
credits Outside the Frame with his drive to
work with youth now, which he does as a
peer mentor.
“I want to help them get to the point
where I am,” he said. “Because of this
program, even though the point where I’m at
isn’t fantastic or anything, my life is a lot
better than it has been, and it’s a lot better
than it could’ve been. And I’m not going to
say it’s 100 percent because of this program,
but a lot of it is due to the people that I met
and the things that I learned about myself.”