What's New
Through Music and Poetry, Young Adults Find an Escape — and a Way to Advocate
Jewel, 19, has written poetry about her
foster care experience. Now, it is part of a
powerful DVD about aging out of care.
Earlier this summer, young adults in Des Moines were asked by the University of Iowa to tell their stories—through poetry and music—for a training of child welfare supervisors. What started as a power point with music is now a powerful DVD. It has become so in demand, the young adults are taking it on the road to other conferences and trainings for social workers, foster parents, court officials, and policy makers.
A big reason is the poetry of Jewel, 19, an Opportunity Passport™ participant who aged out of foster care and advocates for other youth through elevate™, a statewide advocacy group of 157 young people in foster care or adoptive families. Many of the roughly 40 young adults in the Des Moines chapter are Opportunity Passport™ participants, and the Initiative's site in Des Moines, the Youth Policy Institute, partnered with elevate™ to form a youth leadership advisory committee. See the powerful video at www.elevate2inspire.com.
Says Tammy Mahan, who works with the nonprofit Children and Families of Iowa and helped create elevate™: "Jewel is totally awesome. When I first met her two years ago, she was shy and wouldn't even look you in the eye. Now, she is in college and has bloomed into an advocate and amazing trainer." Jewel's poems, such as this one, speak of her feelings about being in foster care:
STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN
We're packing again
The excuses the same
The family different
(Sometimes it feels as if our hearts have been too bruised for it to matter anymore if we move or not but it does..we are THE REJECTED yet again and it hurts..)
False goodbyes and empty hugs
(I just wanna go home to my mommy)
"We'll miss you.":
They mouth as we drive away.
And we mouth the same to them.
But truthfully we were barely there long enough for us to memorize their names.
We'll be on to our next family in a few hours.
We take each other hands
And squeezed
Getting ready for the expected
But the unfamiliar
The new family
The new names to learn
The new rooms
The new beds
The new rules
The new school
The new teachers
The new kids
The new friends to be made
And like so many times before we'll
Start all over again.
For more information, please visit www.jimcaseyyouth.org/docs/voices_of_youth.pdf (PDF, 3MB).
