Westmont Magazine Giving the Vulnerable a Voice
When Christina Robertson Matanick ’08 and husband, Nathanael, decided to foster a child, the experience changed their lives. The transformation began during a training session for foster parents that encouraged them to look through the eyes of a foster child.
Material about foster care often emphasizes the challenges facing foster parents and the negative aspects of the system. But the training session flipped this perspective to pay attention to the children and let them speak for themselves. As filmmakers, Christina and Nathanael understood the powerful effect of hearing these voices. They felt compelled to create a 13-minute film, “ReMoved,” featuring a 9-year-old girl taken from her abusive home and separated from her brother only to bounce around the foster system. Eventually she settled with good foster parents, but her traumatic past left her scarred. The black trash bag she used to move her few belongings symbolizes the way the world sees her: disposable.
“ReMoved” won the 168 Film Festival and earned numerous awards at other festivals worldwide, including the Enfoque International Film Festival, St. Tropez International Film Festival and Sikeston Film Festival. When it went viral in 2014, it captured an important audience: social workers, foster parents, child welfare agencies, court-appointed special advocates and foster children and alums. Since then, “ReMoved”—which has more than 20 million views on YouTube—has played an integral role in training foster parents. Christina and Nathanael have created two additional videos, “ReMoved Part Two: ReMember My Story” and “ReMoved Part Three: Love Is Never Wasted.” They founded ReMoved, a nonprofit organization educating people about the needs of foster children.
The broad dissemination of these films has yielded a rich harvest: stories from many foster children recounting their experiences and expressing appreciation for presenting their perspective. The Matanicks decided to compile these accounts into a book, “Listen: Stories We Carry with Us from House to House,” which they published in 2019. “Nathanael and I love using art and storytelling to highlight issues we believe are on God’s heart and bring about change,” Christina says.
The couple advocate for vulnerable children in other ways. They’re working with Northwestern University on a project exploring the transition of children out of the juvenile justice or other care systems, and they’re close to completing a documentary on this topic.
Christina graduated from Westmont with a degree in sociology. She remembers a speaker saying that Westmont prepared students for jobs that didn’t yet exist. The solid academic foundation she gained in college prepared her to serve Christ in any capacity, including the work with foster care. She and Nathanael have four children, including one they adopted through the foster care system, and they live in Southeast Asia.
“It’s clear in Scripture that God cares for the vulnerable, especially children,” Christina says. “That knowledge drives our content and fuels our work giving voice to their stories.” In the book’s dedication, they say, “We never saw this journey coming, but here we are. May you always know how strong is your voice and how important your story.”