November is designated as National Runaway Prevention Month to highlight the struggles of homeless youth. Each year, between 1.6- and 2.8-million youth run away from home because of child abuse, neglect, and parental substance abuse.
“They struggle to survive from day to day, doing what they can to secure food and temporary shelter. Most of these youth are on the streets because their home environments were too much to endure,” according to a statement by Larkin Street Youth, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that serves homeless and runaway youths.
The runaway month is spearheaded by the National Runaway Safeline (NRS) and National Network for Youth (NN4Y). Their goals is twofold:
1. To raise awareness of the runaway and homeless youth crisis and the issues that these young people face.
2. To educate the public about solutions and the role they can play in ending youth homelessness.
As an ongoing year-to-year campaign in November, people are encouraged to participate in a Social Media Day of Action and the Green Light Project, in recognition of National Runaway Prevention Month. The Green Light project also distributes green light bulbs as a symbol of youth homelessness and supporters are encouraged to turn on their green porch light to raise awareness and show support for runaway youths.
In 2014, special month’s theme was “Piecing it all Together,” designed to represent “The overlap between various at-risk and underserved youth populations. While many people tend to think of various youth populations as separate, the fact is that issue areas such as bullying, abuse, youth violence, human trafficking, LGBTQ, foster care, substance abuse, and the juvenile justice system are often interconnected,” stated National Runaway Safeline.
NRS pieces together the different services available and gathers data to identify trends in runaway youths and youth homelessness.
It also provides a crisis intervention hotline that directs runaway and homeless youths to shelters and counseling services across America.
To learn more, call 1-800-RUNAWAY, access 1800RUNAWAY.org, or text 66008.
