OBJECTIVES:
1) Make this crisis palpable.
2) Drive meaningful engagement (scans, site visits, shares, conversations, donations, volunteer support).
3) Earn media coverage to amplify the story and Courage+.
NEED: A teen’s bedroom should be a refuge — a place to feel safe and protected. But for many LGBTQ+ teens, due to family rejection, this place does not exist.
In the United States, an estimated 1.7 million LGBTQ+ children and teens experience homelessness. Some are as young as 12 years old.
Courage+, a nonprofit dedicated to providing safe, inclusive housing and trauma-informed care for LGBTQ+ youth, needed to make this largely unseen crisis impossible to ignore.
IDEA: If we could make the crisis relatable, we could turn apathy into empathy, silence into support.
Partnering with local artists, we created Unsheltered, a series of teen bedrooms, made entirely of cardboard, the same material often used as makeshift shelter by people living on the street.
Timed ahead of Pride Month to capture heightened attention, we installed these cardboard bedrooms in high-traffic public places, exposed to the elements — just like the youth they represented.
With each installation, we included QR codes explaining the crisis and giving people an easy way to donate.
RESULTS: Unsheltered generated more than 830 million earned media impressions. Donations tallied over $30,000 in the first two weeks alone. In total, the Unsheltered story and coverage helped raise enough funds for Courage+ to purchase an entirely new house. We took an abstract issue and made it a shared public experience, inspiring support and transforming cardboard into real bedrooms and real safety.
