Aerosmith frontman, Steven Tyler, in many years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure the health, safety, and joy of abused and traumatized girls. However, he doesn’t just donate like most people (although, I’m not saying that donating isn’t important!). Steven takes his part in this issue one step further.
Steven donated $500,000 to open up a home for women who are abused and neglected. The shelter was opened up on the Youth Villages’ Bartlett campus. Youth Villages is, “an organization that provides support for families with emotional, mental, and behavioral problems.”
The house is called Janie’s House. It’s named after an Aerosmith song called, “Janie’s Got a Gun,” which is a song about a girl who suffers abuse from her father. Tyler’s foundation is called “Janie’s Fund.” Usually, when you celebrate a grand opening you cut a ribbon, but Tyler didn’t have a ribbon, so he cut a scarf instead. At the opening, Steven said, “This does my heart and my soul good. This is real.”
Why did he decide to open a home? Steven had recently spent time at a treatment facility himself, and he shared that that was where the inspiration sparked. He said, “While I was there, all the girls I met had been abused either physically, mentally, or verbally, or at least ninety percent of them all.”
The house will be a home for fourteen girls at a time. There they will receive the support and therapy they need to be able to heal after the abuse they’ve suffered.
A wall in one of the rooms reads, “Dream on, dream until your dreams come true,” lyrics from one of Aerosmith’s most popular songs, “Dream On.”
“The reason I got into Janie’s House is that I experienced s****l abuse when I was younger, at the age of three.” Fourteen-year-old Jabraya says that Youth Villages and Janie’s House have changed her life. “In Janie’s House, I can learn a lot about my past, and learn that I was not the only one who had been through the same problems.”
“I’m going to take Janie’s House with me wherever I go. It’s like a dream come true,” Steven said. This is the second home he opened. The first was opened in 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia.
If you’d like to hear more about Steven’s half a million dollar donation to build Janie’s House, watch the video down below.
