THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Special Project

Special Project

Until We’re All Home: Storytelling as a Public Health Call to End Homelessness

Entered in Other Causes

Objective

Until We’re All Home is a powerful, diverse, intergenerational documentary that humanizes homelessness by centering the voices of those affected, people with lived experience, community leaders, landlords, and frontline workers. Produced in collaboration with Community Solutions, the film weaves intimate stories and systemic context to reveal both the scale of the housing crisis and the tangible, community-driven solutions transforming lives.

To align with Community Solutions’ mission to end homelessness through data-informed collaboration, Picture Motion designed a national impact campaign that positioned the series as both a cultural touchpoint and a public health call to action.

Our campaign objectives were to:

By pairing the series’ authentic, hopeful storytelling with Community Solutions’ Built for Zero model, the campaign reframed homelessness as a solvable public health crisis requiring systemic, data-driven approaches and cross-sector collaboration. Whether screened in a classroom, a library, a workplace, or a city council chamber, Until We’re All Home became a catalyst for honest dialogue, civic action, and a reimagining of what it means to create a future where everyone has a safe, stable place to live.

Strategy

Strategy & Execution

The Until We’re All Home impact campaign unfolded in three interconnected phases: strategy & partnership development, grassroots screenings, and resource amplification. All anchored in Community Solutions’ ethos: real progress happens when communities lead, data guides, and everyone shows up!

1. Partnership Development
Picture Motion identified over 400 organizations and changemakers spanning housing, education, faith, veteran services, and public health. Through targeted outreach and strategy sessions, we confirmed 30+ grassroots and strategic partners committed to co-hosting screenings, integrating the film into existing programming, or amplifying campaign materials. Partnerships were intentionally diverse and selected in partnership with the Community Solutions team to ensure the campaign reached audiences across sectors, geographies, and age groups.

2. Grassroots Screenings
From August 2024 to April 2025, we supported 20 in-person and virtual screenings across 12 U.S. states and Canada. Screenings took place in public libraries, high schools, faith halls, and workplace wellness events—spaces chosen to foster accessibility and intergenerational participation. Each host received a turnkey toolkit including:

3. Notable Campaign Moments

Challenges & Solutions
Coordinating a campaign across multiple states and audience types required adapting to varying local contexts, from small rural libraries with limited tech to large urban partners with complex approval processes. By maintaining flexible event formats, offering both virtual and in-person options, and providing hosts with ready-to-use materials, we overcame logistical barriers and ensured high-quality events in every market.

What Makes This Work Unique
This campaign demonstrated the power of storytelling as a public health intervention. By pairing an emotionally resonant documentary with a tested, data-driven framework, we created both an emotional entry point and a practical roadmap for action. The series was not presented as an isolated piece of media, it was embedded into community conversations, policy discussions, and classroom learning.

By bridging generations and sectors, Until We’re All Home became more than a film tour; it was a catalyst for systemic change conversations and tangible steps toward ending homelessness. The combination of lived experience, local data, and a hopeful, solutions-focused narrative made the campaign a unique and replicable model for using media to address complex social issues.

 

Results

The Until We’re All Home campaign achieved its core objective: reframing homelessness as a solvable public health and systems issue while equipping communities with tools to act. Guided by Community Solutions’ Built for Zero framework, we delivered measurable outcomes that reflected both reach and depth of engagement.

Qualitative feedback revealed significant shifts in understanding: educators integrated the film into curricula, veteran advocates connected the series to local housing efforts, and community leaders reported more constructive, solutions-focused conversations with residents and policymakers. Several municipalities expressed interest in joining Built for Zero after learning about its impact through the campaign.

The screenings consistently paired storytelling with actionable steps—service activities, civic engagement, or volunteer recruitment, ensuring the experience translated into tangible outcomes. From high school students inspired to volunteer at local shelters to corporate employees organizing donation drives, the campaign fostered a sense of shared responsibility across generations and sectors.

By uniting narrative power with data-driven pathways, Until We’re All Home demonstrated that film can move beyond awareness to mobilize diverse audiences toward systemic, community-led change—advancing the vision of a future where homelessness is rare, brief, and never a way of life.

Media

Video for Until We’re All Home: Storytelling as a Public Health Call to End Homelessness

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Picture Motion, Community Solutions

Links

Entry Credits