In 2003 I received a call from the organization Safe Space. (www.safespacenyc.org).

This organization helps children and teenagers from broken homes with allocations and counselling, as well as therapeutic programs to help them deal with their experiences of abuse and neglect. They needed a fund raising video to show at one of their gala events. While producing the video I learned about the different activities of Safe Space and the environment they serve.

The distress I was encountering was deeply shocking. I felt compelled to inform a larger audience about the desperate circumstances in which tens of thousands teenagers and young adults live on the streets of New York City. As I started videotaping it became obvious that I needed to to produce a film that could justify the cause of street children in New York. ‚Safe Space’, ‚Sylvia’s Shelter’ and ‚The Neutral Zone’ agreed to collaborate with me in my efforts to document their work and granted me permission to conduct interviews on camera.

Lost in the Crowd’ was an ongoing production, shot between 2003 and 2009.

The film is intended to honor the work and personal involvement of the volunteers and counselors who work on the streets. I hope it shows how their simple gestures of kindness affect the youth who survive each day under brutally harsh conditions.

Following are a few of the observations I made when I was riding around with the Safe Space outreach van:

A grey, unobtrusive one-family home. Young women enter and leave, some are carrying infants. This is a safe house, a shelter for girls under eighteen years of age, who have been removed from their parents’ homes because of abuse and/or neglect. Due to the severity of the abuse that they have experienced in their homes, these children are not yet emotionally prepared to enter a conventional foster house. This particular safe house not only meets the material needs of these young women, but also provides a supportive environment in which they draw strength from their shared experiences.

Because these teenage girls are often the victims of sexual abuse by adoptive parents, many reappear several times in the shelter, and at times prefer a life on the street to a new and potentially abusive foster situation.