FCFCEP Child Welfare Film Festival and Symposium

Yasmin Mistry thinks you ought to see what she sees. For over a decade, Yasmin’s had a close-up view of what happens to kids in the foster care system as a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate for those children. A filmmaker and animator, she wanted to tell their stories. Even more, she wanted them to tell their own truth through film, writing, art, and public speaking. So she created the Foster Care Film & Community Engagement Project, giving foster youth an opportunity to develop storytelling skills, sharing the must-be-told realities of living in foster families, and educating others about the foster care system.

Yasmin plans to host the first Child Welfare Film Festival and Symposium next May in New York City during Foster Care Families Month 2019. FCFCEP has already produced a series of short films from the first-person perspective of people who grew up in the foster care system with struggles and successes. Those documentary shorts will be featured at the festival along with films made by others, touching on themes that affect foster youth: abuse, neglect, mental health, substance abuse, sibling separation, adoption, identity, and related challenges.

This Awesome Without Borders Grant will be used for venue rental, and if there’s any left over, for recording the panel discussions and Q&As that will accompany the films.

There are about 10,000 young people in foster care in New York City. Yasmin would like to them all to come (for free) to the Festival because she thinks every one of them can be inspired to make the most of their lives. Learn more here, and follow along with the work on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. (And wherever you live, foster kids need suitcases.)

Get a taste for what’s to come with the trailer for “Foster Care: Trash Bags.”

Foster Care: Trash Bags from Foster Care Film on Vimeo.