Event in Partnership with the Ticket to Dream Foundation

San Diego CA— What happens when a young person leaves the foster care system without preparation or support? To address this topic, Just in Time for Foster Youth (JIT), a nonprofit organization that engages a caring community to help transition age foster youth achieve self-sufficiency and well-being, hosted a showing of the film, “Friday’s Child,” at the Mission Valley UltraStar Cinemas on Tuesday, May 7, 2019, in partnership with the Ticket to Dream Foundation.
The JIT community gathered for the exclusive showing of “Friday’s Child,” which follows the story of a young man leaving the foster care system at age 18 without any support and the decisions he makes to survive in the world on his own. The film paints a picture of what can happen to transition age foster youth when they don’t have a supportive community, adding to the negative statistics that foster youth too often fall into. Topics focused on in the film include peer pressure, instability, decision-making and survival.
“It is an exceptional movie that illustrates the struggles of leaving foster care and trying to survive,” said Isaac Gunn, who is a current JIT participant and former foster youth. “I’ve been in a lot of the situations in the movie. The reality is stressful. Even a small influence can have a profound impact when you lack a support system, and feeling so isolated and alone can make it so much easier to accept any kind of connection, even negative and toxic ones.”
The will be another showing on June 12, 2019 at 6:30pm at AMC Fashion Valley- 7037 Friars Road, San Diego.
Your movie ticket will help change the life of a foster child. Friday’s Child, an award-winning independent film produced by OnBuzz, focuses on a young adult fresh out of foster care, played by Tye Sheridan, who faces the perils and temptations of life after emancipation. We’re hosting an exclusive screening of Friday’s Child, where audience members will have the opportunity to change the story for real foster youth. The Ticket to Dream Foundation and OnBuzz are working alongside donors, community members, and a national network of nonprofits, to shine a spotlight and inspire action to improve the futures of foster youth aging out of care.
Each year, over 20,000 foster youth will age out of foster care. Facing instant adulthood, thousands of foster youth must independently find housing, employment, feed and clothe themselves, with little to no support, often without a high school diploma, job experience, or a place to live. With odds stacked against their success, Ticket to Dream Foundation’s Take Flight program works to arm foster youth with support programs and resources that help them graduate, learn valuable life and job skills, obtain access to technology, have support systems, and access to safe housing. Together, we can grow, expand, and pour support into programs that impact futures.
https://onbuzz.tugg.com/events/friday-s-child-pwam
JIT offers young people the chance to transition out of the foster care system with a better foundation through its services and supportive community. This provides transition age foster youth with critical resources to help build essential relationships to become confident, capable and connected adults.
“Being disconnected creates a perilous gap for transition age youth. With this film, Ticket to Dream Foundation is emphasizing how quickly a downward spiral begins from seemingly small obstacles that can have truly tragic consequences,” said Don Wells, Executive Director of Just in Time for Foster Youth. “That’s why our primary focus at Just in Time is to offer a community of support that creates a different story, one that ends in a life filled with purpose and promise.”
The Ticket to Dream Foundation and OnBuzz have partnered with nonprofits across the nation, including JIT, to help transform the lives of foster youth and positively impact future generations. Proceeds from screenings of “Friday’s Child” benefit the Ticket to Dream Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating hope and opportunity for foster children across the nation to help them just be kids.
To learn more about Just in Time for Foster Youth and the organization’s services that support transitioning foster youth, please visit www.jitfosteryouth.org.