Idea Tree Media and Communications

[Light instrumental music plays in background throughout.]

Text on screen: Client Work: Almost Home, Webster University SOC

[A person walks down the steps of an apartment building and walks down sidewalk and some streets to a bus stop and sits down.]

Narrator 1: I grew up in the roughest part of St. Louis. It was very dangerous. Like, literally I walked outside my door one day and there was a dead body at the bottom of my steps. We couldn't sleep by the window.

Narrator 2: We didn't have anything to live in place to place. Homelessness wasn't new to me. I didn't really understand it because it was my world. It was all I knew. 

Narrator 3: It had its bad days and when it was bad, it was really bad.

Narrator 4: When I found out I was pregnant I was freaking out. I was very nervous.

Narrator 5: It's like a blank feeling. I don't want to say it, I'm happy you like in the middle. I'm pregnant. I just thought oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

Narrator 6: My mom. She was mad and crying.

Narrator 7: They weren't very excited about it. They thought that it was a foolish mistake and that I should have waited.

Narrator 8: Gotta make the best of it. I gotta keep this baby. Nobody's gonna blame me. Keep this baby, like nobody agree with me. Gonna make the best of it. 

Text on screen: Ashley, Alumni/Transitional Living Coach: My older sister, she researched stable places to go, and she found Almost Home.

Text on screen: Keita, Current Member: This was the first time I was on my own. I always had my mom or a granny.

Text on screen: Jamesha, Alumni: I really love staying here because if I ever need help with something as far as my kids. Like especially Stephanie, the one who told me about the program. She will always say, “Do you need me to watch the kids? You look like you need a nap.”

Text on screen: Keana, Current Member: I think of it as home. I don't think of it as a permanent home but you know for the moment, it's home.

Text on screen: Tyiesha, Alumni: When I came, I felt love. I felt like I never had family before.

Text on screen: Tequoyah, Alumni: So this was gonna be my new beginning. My new place to start all over to reinvent myself. For becoming a new person and meet new people.

Text on screen: Xzariya, Current Member: I'm excited to meet new people all the time. All the time. So I'm just like alright you do this because you're shown a role. I'll try to put the past behind me. Leave that alone. Start fresh here. Like a fresh start. 

Jamesha: Everyone makes mistakes. You know. That's how I look at it. Everyone makes mistakes, and you learn from them. 

Xzariya: We had an accident. The babies were an accident.

Text on screen: Jonea, Current Member: Just because we have a baby, like we can do more stuff then just be a mom.

Jamesha: Almost Home has five goals: Education, Employment, Parenting, Emotional Well-being and Independence. 

Ashley: We focus on education. Without education they won't be able to be employable

Xzariya: I'm hungry. Like a want a job so bad in my career so I can finally be on my own. That what I want to do. Be like stable. Make my kids happy.  

[Two people look at business suit clothes in a store.]

Keita: I can be a mom and survive.

Jonea: Learn about different ways to raise our children.

[Person feeds a baby a bottle sitting in a chair.]

Ashley: Hope is the best contraception. So we give them counseling to get them at a level to where they are ready to change. 

[Two people sit in chairs in a playroom with kid’s books and furniture. One holds a baby. They are talking and laughing together.]

Tequoyah: This place helps people. It saves lives. It's taught me so much.

[Person plays with a child on the floor.]

Jonea: Like I'm better than what I used to be. I'm not always sad.

Tequoyah: Almost Home is basically given me the inspiration to go after every dream I wanted to do.

Jamesha: They want us to get an education. They want us to get higher employment. They want us to be a supervisor or a boss one day, a manager, you know. 

Ashley: Most people don't live within their means. So it's important to teach our young ladies to live within their means.  

Keauna: They help you become a better parent. Take things a different way.

[Classroom with a teacher giving instructions to a class.]

Narrator 10: They have taught me independence and taught me self-discipline. 

[Three people in a break room getting coffee or drinks.]

Xzariya: Trying working really hard towards our goal.

Jonea: And just pushing me and it makes me happy because I never had like this support before.

Keita: I just want to give everybody a big hug. And tell everybody thank you cause it's how I really feel about it.

Tequoyah: We don't want people looking at us and feeling sorry for us.

Ashley: We are trying to break this chain of poverty.

Tyiesha: We really don’t need no one to feel bad for us. We feel bad for ourselves. You know.

Tequoyah: A lot of us come from really treacherous, dangerous backgrounds. Some of us have grown up very poor.

Ashley: You know, the continuous chain.

Jamesha: But I really wanna go to college. I want to be someone. I wanna go to college now. I want to be someone and donations to help out a lot of the day.

[Kids plays with toys on a carpet floor.]

Narrator 11: If I don't have hope or something to look forward to that I don't have a reason to strive and live.

Xzariya: Help would be like ahhhh.

[Smiling child sits in playroom.]

Narrator 12: You could literally save a life.

Ashley: It's important to donate today because these children are suffering. Not only the young ladies, but their children are suffering.

[More kids play with more toys on a carpeted floor.]

Jonea: Us girls, we've been through a lot so far in our lives.

Keita: Whatever you can spare or whatever you have extra. That’d be a ton of help.

[People and kids play with toys.]

Jamesha: The donations help a lot. Even if it's not a lot, it's still a smile on someone’s face.

Tyiesha: I think it's very important that people reach out and try to support and help. I really appreciate that.

[Person sits at bus stop.]

Narrator 12: Almost Home was founded in 1993 with the capacity to house five mothers between the ages of 12 and 19 years old. With the help from donors and volunteer efforts, Almost Home has grown and can now provide temporary housing and support services for 15 moms, and 25 children. Almost Home continues to provide these services for up to eight years, through our alumni support program in order to break the cycle of poverty, two generations at a time.

[Kids play in a playroom.]

Narrator 12: Almost Home relies heavily upon the generous contributions from our donors and volunteers, if you are interested in contributing, please visit www.almosthome.stl.org or call 314-771-HOME. Almost Home is inspiring teen moms to create a better life for themselves and their children.

[Music ends]

[Digital image of the Earth and rows of people.]

Text on screen: 7 billion people living on Earth, By 2050: 9,000,000,000 …

Narrator: Planet Earth is currently home to over 7 billion people, and that number is growing every day. By 2050, it's estimated there will be over 9 billion of us. So population grows, what's the problem? Here's the problem: all of those billions of people need to eat. And while our population keeps growing, our farmable land is not. We only have 8 billion acres of farmable land; almost half of that is used for food production.

[Image of a map of the United States and a graphic of a person asking a question “So?” Earth image with people standing on the planet surface. Graphics of tomatoes, corn, chickens, cows. Two images of planet Earth graphics.]

Text on screen: 8 billion acres of farmable land … , based on the Standard American diet it would take two Earths to feed the increasing population.

Narrator: If everyone in the world ate like an average American, we would need a whole nother earth to feed us all, but we only have one. So what can we do? We have to eat right, well yes, but we can start eating smarter by   transitioning to a mostly plant-based diet. You see, with two football fields you can feed 14 people on a plant-based diet with that same amount you can feed only one on the standard American diet.

[Graphic of person, a brain, a brain eating a tomato, carrots, eggplant. Graphics of two football fields with produce imagery and 14 people. A cow graphic.]

Text on screen: S.A.T.

Narrator: But what is the standard American diet? Well it's what most Americans eat. It's composed of 63% processed foods and 25% animal-based products; only 12% is plant-based and this is a big problem.

[American flag image in a rotating circle with U.S. map in background. Graphics of pizza, French fries, hamburger, cow, pig, chicken, tomato, carrot, eggplant, banana.]

Narrator: Seventy percent of Americans are overweight or obese. Childhood obesity doubled in the last 30 years, diabetes: 100 million Americans have it or are pre-diabetic. Heart disease kills over 600,000 people every year. That's one in every four deaths, and we spent over $656 billion in medical costs for heart disease in 2015 alone.

Text on screen: Overweight, Obese, 1980 Childhood Obesity, Present, Diabetes: 100,000,000 Americans

[People graphics flash, a heart breaks in two. Pill bottles and hospital graphics, $656,000,000,000]

Narrator: But these problems are easily reversible through a plant-based diet. We have the power to protect our health and create a more sustainable world just by choosing what we put on our plates. Unfortunately, most Americans don't know this. Why? Because our doctors aren't telling us about it.

[A person graphic wearing a cape and flying through the air, graphics of a plate of healthy food, the numbers 71% on screen, a medical building, fail, doctor image holding pill bottles]

Text on screen: A Sustainable World!! How can doctor be able to address the problems if they don’t know the facts? The Plantrician Project, Lack of Education]

Narrator: Why not? Because they don't know because no one's teaching them. In fact, 71% of U.S. medical schools fail to provide the recommended minimum amount of nutrition education for their young doctors. So when they finally get their MDs and start their practice, their first instinct is to prescribe pills as medicine instead of a healthy diet as medicine. How can doctors be able to address the problems if they don't know the facts? The plantrician project believes that this is the root of the problem, and they're doing all they can to change it. They work with doctors, along with others in health care field or professions educating, equipping and empowering them with the knowledge of the benefits of plant-based nutrition. They also give them tools and resources and even introduce them to leading experts in the field of nutrition. They're fundamentally transforming the medical community, along with all of its patients. Help plant the seeds of change; transform health, health care and the world.

[Graphics of doctors, stethoscope, graduation cap, fist, wrench, briefcase.]

Text on screen: The Plantrician Project, Planting the seeds of change

[Music swells and ends.]

{Music playing]

[Large group of fresh carrots.]

Text on screen: Client Work: Seeds of Hope,Webster University, SOC

Text on Screen: [Food Desert] Noun, An area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

[Chick-fil-A store and sign. DQ Grill & Chill sign, KFC Drive Thru restaurant sign. A McDonalds sign. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Open sign.]

Narrator 1: Spanish Lake is basically a food desert. Every corner you turn there's always a liquor store or a fast-food place.

Narrator 2: Honestly, all we really have access to is fried chicken, McDonald's, burger joints, Krispy Kremes, very unhealthy.

Text on screen: Deidre Kelly, Youth Educator

Kelly: Well at Seeds of Hope, we believe that good food is a basic human right, and so our mission is to increase access to healthy and affordable food among the community, especially the low-income residents of Spanish Lake.

[Kelly sits at a picnic table in a garden area.]

[Music continues to play.]

[Tomato plants on wire supports. Red, green and yellow peppers are thrown into a bin. Park bench with colorful images and the words “Seeds of Hope” painted on it. A garden with leafy produce planted in rows. Images of more vegetables like green peppers and herbs in the garden. Three people work in the garden under an open shed boxing up produce. Person weighs vegetables on a scale and puts into a brown sack. Four to five people bag up vegetables in a processing line outside at the garden. People walk to and from the garden. People gather around a white board with notes about the program. People pull a cart through the garden.]

Kelly: Seeds of Hope Farm is a project under the Community Action Agency of St. Louis County, and we're here on a half-acre of land where we grow primarily vegetables and herbs that we then distribute to the community through our Community Supported Agriculture program. The teen program is a farm-based internship for youth ages 16 to 18 years old living in the Spanish Lake community. And it's really an opportunity for teens to learn about sustainable agriculture practices here on the farm.

Text on screen: Joshua Grant, Intern Graduate

Grant: Back when I was in high school, my counselor had told me about the program, and she thought it would be a great program for me to do. I learned a lot about organic farming and how to work with the community and how much people actually in my community, which I live in, are struggling as far as like eating healthier foods.

[Person shovels the dirt in the garden and pulls out a carrot and adds to a large pile of carrots. Grant and another person work with carrots and bins for distribution. More people weigh and bag up carrots.]

Text on screen: Heather Stevenson, Joshua’s Mom

Stevenson: To watch him nurture something, you know it's just, as a mother, it's wonderful. It really is wonderful.

[Stevenson stands in community garden talking.]

Text on screen: Dohn Stoder, Intern Graduate

Stoder: There's not a lot of people that know anything about farming or growing food, or even like organic food right so it's a good experience to learn something new.

[Stoder stands in community garden talking. More vegetables are plucked and gathered.]

Text on screen: Davion Brown, Teen Intern

Brown: We learned how to make recipes that are healthier, like modifying a taco and using different ingredients to make a healthier one.

[Brown stands in community garden talking. Vegetables are sliced up on a cutting board. Vegetables are cooked.]

Text on screen: Zayla Montgomery, Teen Intern

Montgomery: Eating something that I grew for the first time was amazing. it was exhilarating, like I made this you know. It felt good.

[Montgomery sits in community garden talking. More people chop a variety of vegetables.]

Text on screen: Terrence Yates, Teen Intern

Yates: You just like you just have like a rush of excitement because you just felt like, I did this like with my own hands, rather than go to the store and getting yourself.

[Kelly sits and talks on a picnic bench in the community garden. Group of people gather at a picnic table and go over lessons about care and distribution of the community garden. Team works together as supplies are passed out. Two flags fly in the wind. A group harvests more produce.]

Kelly: So the goal of the Seeds of Hope farm teen internship program is to inspire the youth to be leaders in their community. And we do that through team-building exercises, communication exercises, where the teams learn how to communicate compassionately with one another. Many of them enter the program lacking confidence and so the program really bolsters their self-esteem, and allows them to feel like a value in the community where they can go out and help feed people in need.

Text on screen: Tiara Curry, Teen Intern

Curry: It teaches me about like teamwork and communication because before this I wasn't really into being with other people and working together with them.

[Curry talks while in community garden. People shown bagging and boxing produce.]

Grant: I don't say she taught me how to change my body language because I guess my body language is always like I was mad or angry.

Stevenson: He's more out of things. More humble. He's more patient. He’s more understanding. He’s not so angry.

[Grant and Stevenson walk through the community garden.]

Brown: I was told that if you do something that you love that you would never work a day in your life. I've had fun here, and I feel like I don’t work a day in my life.

[Brown harvests some herbs in community garden.]

Text on screen: CAASTLC, Community Action Agency of St. Louis County, Inc.

[Music swells, then ends.]

Text on Screen: Seeds of Hope Farm Logo