A thin young man with gaunt cheeks, sits in a chair. His hair is uncombed, and his face is exhausted. He hasn’t eaten in four days, and has been walking barefoot in the streets telling people he is John the Baptist.

Quietly he says, “My name is Beau Porter and I am dead.”

On any given night in Australia there are 36,000 homeless young people. Abused, neglected, and traumatised, they have been suffering silently for years. Now a three legged campaign that includes a report, a documentary and an education initiative aims to raise awareness of their plight.

Beau’s story is part of the Oasis observational documentary about youth homelessness, which chronicles the life of homeless Australians at the Salvation Army’s Oasis youth refuge.  Oasis is run by Captain Paul Moulds, a man who has worked tirelessly, and anonymously for years to help Sydney’s homeless youth.

It captures youth homelessness in all it’s gritty reality of drugs, violence, criminality and emotional trauma.

"We wanted all the key issues surrounding homelessness to come out and so, the characters were ways of telling that,” explains director of the documentary, Ian Darling.

The documentary focuses on the lives of seven homeless people, each telling a compelling story of life as a homeless Australian.

 “I guess we didn’t go necessarily into the goriest, or the most aggressive or whatever,” explains Mr Darling. “We came up with something that told the story, yet it gave enough hope for the audience.”

The documentary was launched with the release of the National Youth Commission inquiry into youth homelessness, during National Youth Week in April 2008.. The report was funded by the Caledonia Foundation, and is the first national independent inquiry into youth homelessness since the Burdekin Inquiry in 1989.

“The problem got worse, and gradually it got to the point we felt that we’re at a turning point, we need to have another look,” explains Associate Professor David MacKenzie, of Swinburne University, one of the four commissioners responsible for the report.

“The government wasn’t doing what we thought they should be doing.”

The report aimed to document the history of policy, programs, and initiatives by Federal, State and Territory governments to assist homeless youth. It also wanted to identify the issues that prevent homeless young people from connecting with the wider community, and to report on the existing services and programs

According to the report, the current situation is very tragic. Despite the fact that Australia’s economy has been consistently booming, the last 20 years saw the number of homeless youth reach 22,000. In fact, more than one third of the 100,000 homeless Australians are teenagers (aged 12-18) or young adults (aged 18-25).

The report detailed many of the causes of homelessness such as drug use, family breakdown, housing affordability, poverty, and mental health problems. It also asked the Australian government to develop a National Homelessness Strategy and Action Plan.

While the report provided the long needed information on this growing problem, the documentary put a face to the statistics.

Beau for example, was raised in Queensland with his three siblings, after his father left when he was 13 years old.  He is one of the 49% of youths who left home after a family break-up. His mother tried to make ends meet in a small home, and they suffered from financial difficulties.

His mother was a good woman, and unlike many other homeless youth, there was no parental abuse in Beau’s story. However they did disagree often, and the arguments would end up in shouting wars.

Then one day he left.

“It wasn’t like walking out and leaving and never coming back,” he remembers. “It was a gradual leaving of home, like I go for a week, and then come back for a couple of days,” he continues.

It took him four months to leave home entirely. Beau, moved around staying at friends places, sleeping at men’s refuges, and in desperate times, under bridges.

Like the 6 per cent of homeless youth, he also battled depression, and at the age of 21 tried to commit suicide. Following his suicide attempt he moved to Sydney, and met Captain Moulds, but continued to live in temporary shelters.

But one day it got too much, and  he suffered from a psychotic episode, which resulted in the haunting scene in the documentary, where he walks into Paul’s office, sits down, and tells him he feels dead.

“I think that psychosis was a combination of a lot of stress, taking a lot of pot, and also anti-depressant medication that I was on as well,” he remembers.

Paul, helped Beau go to the hospital where he spent nine weeks in psychiatric care. Although, the incident is one of the most disturbing scenes in the Oasis documentary, Beau does not remember it.

“For about six weeks I didn’t have any memories, there are flashes that come up every now and again,” he says.

He does remember though, the help that Paul, and the Oasis centre provided, and has vowed to help other homeless youth. His story, is what the NYC report calls the “process” of homelessness- becoming homeless, being homeless, and then re-establishing a livelihood and a place in the community.

He, now,  has his own independent housing, and works along with Paul in Oasis. Life, he says, is not too bad anymore.

“Pretty much ever since I met Paul, I did a lot of growing,” says Beau. “I feel that I’ve got myself together….. I’m pretty much independent, so I am a contributing member to the community now instead of being a drain on the resources,” he says.

But there are many out there who are still at risk. The NYC report highlighted the importance of early intervention, especially in schools. With that in mind, this week, the Caledonia Foundation has donated a copy of the documentary to approximately 3,200 secondary schools in Australia as part of its education and outreach component.  The “Oasis Education Guide,” was launched at Parliament House, on the 28^th of May by Tanya Plibersek, the Federal Minister for Housing.

The documentary will supplement a summary of the NYC report, and a study-guide which highlights it’s curriculum relevance.

“We felt the next generation really needed to embrace the whole homeless thing,” explains Mr Dalring, who is also the chairman of the Caledonia Foundation.

Although, the lives of the youth in the documentary may seem worlds apart from that of the students, there are still many similarities. The students, says Mr Darling, will appreciate their privileged status when they see the suffering of their peers in Oasis, and they will also be able to relate.

“They will see that so many of them are in the same age bracket,” he explains. “So I guess they will say gee these guys are teenagers like me, and that they are human beings…and it could be me.”

The additional study guide, which is owned by Metro Magazine, aims to help today’s media savvy students to engage with many of the questions that the film raised. Through exercises and role playing games, the guide encourages them to emphasize with the characters in the film, and the challenges they face.

“The fundamental aim is to lock [the students] in. Where would you go, what would you do, how would you cope?’ explains Marguerite O'Hara, the guide’s author.

So far, the schools have responded to the idea enthusiastically. Tony Weiss, the head of the Physical Development, Health & Physical Education (PDHPE), at Kincoppal Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart, can’t wait to show it to his Year 10 students in term four.

He has also encouraged the school’s boarding school students to view the film when it aired on ABC, under supervision.

“Initially some of them were confronted with the language and some of the violence that was exhibited in the program,” he says. “But it’s obviously very necessary for the teacher to...explain to the students the context that the film was made,” he says.

The education initiative is vital because often the problem starts during school years.

“In most schools it won’t be a big problem,” says Professor MacKenzie. But if every school has one or two students at risk, then the problem becomes significant.

“If you add that up across thousands of schools, you do end up with thousands upon thousands of young people,” he continues.

Beau points, that the documentary, can help the students who are experiencing the same problems to seek help before it’s too late.

“And also for the people who don’t have these issues, it may open their eyes and soften their hearts a little bit to the homeless people," he says.

No one knows the importance of school intervention more than Beau. After leaving home, he continued to go to school. Although, he says, some of his teachers were aware there he was experiencing problem at home, no one guessed that he was spending nights under a bridge.

“I never did homework, the only thing that got me through school was tests, exams, and stuff like that,” he says.  “I am a pretty smart person.”

It’s a series of events, often tragic that leads young people to leave their home, their family, and live a meagre existence on the streets and in shelters. Despite this, many people still think of them as criminals rather than the victims they really are.

“But people look at them and go hey what are you doing, you are sleeping on the streets, you are not trying to better your life,” says Beau. “And those people are going through hell, and it’s why they are there right now they don’t know what to do.”

Hopefully, times will change. Mr Weiss points that his students are now becoming interested in the problem, and want to work with homeless youth as part of the school’s Social Justice program.

Paul is also getting the recognition he deserves.

“Many of the local community members, and shop owners were wanting to close down Oasis,” says Mr Darling. “And there’s been a total paradigm shift, of them saying now we understand what you are doing and would like to encourage you.”

It has also helped Beau’s family understand him more. While it was shocking to his family, it has helped them understand the ordeal he’s been through.

“They were shocked, most people who knew me were,” he says.  “They look at it and they saw who I am now, they are actually very proud of me.”

He is finishing his community welfare certificate, and volunteers in church. He has finally found a place where he can belong.

“My journey is a testament that people can change given the opportunity, and the right resources.”

Image:Paul Moulds and Co-director/cinematographer of The Oasis-Sascha Ettinger
by Publik16
Courtesy of Creative Commons