Once upon a time, Miley Cyrus took homeless runaway Jesse Helt on a date.
To the MTV Video Music Awards.
Jesse accepted Miley’s VMA Award for Video of the Year with this speech:
“I am accepting this award on behalf of the 1.6 million runaways and homeless youth in the United States who are starving, lost, and scared for their lives right now. I know this because I’m one of these people. … I’ve survived in shelters all over the city. I’ve cleaned your hotel rooms. I’ve been an extra in your movies. I’ve been an extra in your life. Although I may have been invisible to you on the streets, I have a lot of the same dreams that brought many of you here tonight.”
The whole world was like, “What’s the deal with Miley?” Some of the world was like, “Miley, is he your boyfriend?”
!!!???
Miley was not messing around, world. She was seriously serious about homelessness.
And not just homelessness, but also LGBTQ issues — which is a seriously serious crosspoint for homeless youth. Here are four reasons that explain why:
1. 20% to 40% of America’s homeless are LGBTQ.
(Image source: Instagram)
2. 10% of America’s entire population is LGBTQ. That’s a small amount of the entire population and a large amount of the homeless population.
It gets even harder for transgender homeless youth.
3. 1 in 3 homeless transgender youth are turned away from homeless shelters because of their gender identity or gender expression.
4. Over half of LGBTQ homeless youth commit suicide.
Miley says she doesn’t really identify with gender so much, and she doesn’t want gender expression to hold anyone back, much less force anyone into homelessness, much LESS make anyone’s life in any way less than great.
Queen.
And now Miley is using her fame to support homeless and LGBTQ youth.
What began as a date to the MTV awards that many people wrote off as a publicity stunt, Miley has turned into a big foundation. A legit foundation. It’s called Happy Hippie. And her aim with Happy Hippie is to bring more awareness and help to this really horrible problem of homeless youth — particularly LGBTQ homeless youth.
The beginning of solving this problem is PURE awareness, so she’s starting in the right place.
She’s just bein’ Miley.
Seriously.
Watch to find out more about Miley’s foundation:
