This presentation is by a student from "Acting Up - Using Theater & Technology for Social Change," The DePaul School for New Learning. Tom Tresser, instructor.

1. New Executive Director
of
The Chicago Coalition
for the Homeless

2. CCH
Established in 1980, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless
is a large social change organization that organizes programs
and advocates preventing and ending homelessness.
CCH believes that housing is a human right in a just society.
With the help of community organizers, pro-bono attorneys
and policy specialists, the CCH is on a mission to change
public policies and address the lack of affordable housing in
Chicago.

3. Why I chose CCH…
The CCH offers outreach programs which connect formally
homeless people turned field advisors to those experiencing
homelessness now.
I became familiar with CCH in 2008 while taking a junior-
year social justice course at DePaul University. I was
required to volunteer at CCH for a total of twenty five hours
throughout the quarter to gain community service credit
hours for the course.
During my time with CCH, I worked with a formally
homeless woman turned CCH advisor named Miracle.
Miracle let me film her personal story of how she overcame
poverty and now is helping others who are less fortunate
through CCH’s advocacy programs. (Unfortunately, my
computer crashed in 2010 and I lost the video of Miracle’s story) 

5. Another Important Inspiration…
The success of now the famous documentary KONY2012 (most
watched video on YouTube of all time) showed me how a high
glossed thirty minute social justice film has the power to evoke
emotion and curiosity in viewers. Athough the campaign fizzled
out, the film was quite excellent to watch.

6. Strategy: Make my film a
YouTube and social
media Hit!
Overnight success is not likely and my target audience are area college
students who can volunteer for CCH, politicians, and their constituents

7. Why are we targeting
Illinois politicians?
“Last summer,
the General
Assembly passed
The film would be a a FY 2012 state
superhero/villain premise where budget that
Miracle and other field advisors slashed funding
are the “superheroes” and certain to homeless
politicians who voted for slashing shelters and
funding for homelessness transitional
programs are the “villains”. They housing by 52%,
will share their story while real from $9.1 million
facts concerning homelessness in to $4.4 million.
IL are sprinkled in. Before the $4.7
Specific Illinois politicians will be million cutback,
called out! shelters across
Illinois had to turn
away people
more than
45,000 times last

8. Film Title: Chicago’s Invisible
Heroes
Careful consideration will have to go into the process of combining
the real life stories from the field advisors into this dramatic way of
storytelling so that no one feels disrespected or that their struggles are
being used for any other purpose than to inspire and help others.

9. YouTube=More Social Medias
The film on YouTube will be spread by first
contacting Chicago area YouTube beauty “gurus”
and asking them to mention the film in their
tutorials, (popular “gurus” get thousands to
millions of views on their videos with
demographics in the range of women 18-34!) word
and posts of the film will likely spread to
Facebook and Twitter and expand to larger
Chicago audiences. This was actually how I first
learned about Kony2012-while watching a makeup
tutorial on YouTube, the young lady mentioned the film
and caught my attention.
Haha just
making light
of the
situation! 

10. Lastly…
We need to create a sense of urgency and set a
time limit! While working with the coalition,
I learned that they target the period during the
Illinois State Budget review. I want the film
to stamp the deadline of the budget review
date and call on volunteers to urge area
politicians bring the CCH’s programs up in
review meetings and to allocate funding for
the homelessness prevention programs and
shelters.