Q: Can my company volunteer with your youth for a day?
A: The eXpressions program strives to establish long-term, meaningful relationships between our volunteers and youth. We ask volunteers to make an eight-week commitment so that this can take place. We don't currently have opportunities for large groups of individuals to volunteer, but we do have some great sponsorship opportunities.

Q: How old are the youth that participate in blue sky inn programming?
A: They are women and men from fourteen to twenty-four years old.

Q: So, it's not an actual inn. Why is it called blue sky inn?
A: The original plan for the organization was to establish an inn that would be open to the public and serve as a transitional employment program. Youth would be hired to work as housekeepers, cooks, gardeners, etc. Our first step towards this goal is the blue sky employment program.

Q: How do youth become homeless? Are most of them runaways that could go back home if they wanted to?
A: Youth become homeless for a wide variety of reasons. Violence, substance abuse, and poverty are the most common contributors to a home becoming unsafe and unstable. Sometimes parents become incarcerated, enter drug treatment programs, or move to another area for a job opportunity, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Some teens are asked to leave home because they become pregnant or identify themselves as lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/transgender. Many families simply lack the resources to adequately shelter and feed these youth.

Rates of suicide, substance abuse, HIV, survival sex (sex for money, shelter, or food), anxiety and conduct disorders, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder are significantly higher for homeless youth than for stably housed youth.

Pregnant and parenting teens are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless. One survey found that 26 percent of pregnant and parenting teens in Illinois live in unstable or unsafe conditions, which puts these youth at serious risk of homelessness. In urban areas, this number increases to 54 percent.

A Federal study of youth who had been in foster care found that 25 percent had experienced homelessness after leaving the foster care system.

More information on homelessness in Chicago can be found here. http://www.chicagohomeless.org/learn

Q: How many homeless youth are there?
A: There are approximately 26,000 homeless youth in Illinois each year. In Chicago, approximately 12,000 youth will spend at least three nights without shelter. There are only 119 shelter beds available for homeless youth in Chicago.

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