This summer, UCCP hosted another successful summer academy, providing an opportunity for 25 Philadelphia youth and 9 Leader Corps members to spend 6 weeks working to develop leadership and media production skills and educate others about important issues in their community.
Read the stories about specific projects below and check out some more pictures of this summer on our Flickr account!
This summer UCCP’s home-grown news show POPPYN (Presenting Our Perspective on Philly Youth News) welcomed a new cohort of young members to its team, representing many Philadelphia neighborhoods and schools: Kensington/ Kensington Culinary Academy, Olney/ Science Leadership Academy, Center City/ Mastery Charter School, South Philly/ Horace Furness High School, North Philly/ Tacony Academy, Brewerytown/ Constitution High. Students were trained by UCCP’s veteran V-Media producers Saeed Briscoe and Taesha White on media production and literacy, with support of Temple University intern Lynsey Graeff.
The new crew learned the mission of POPPYN and what it takes to produce an episode by jumping right into the process, assuming the jobs of researchers, anchors, reporters, camera people and editors in the production of POPPYN #5! Episode 5 focused on food in Philadelphia, highlighting the efforts of youth-led urban nutrition and gardening programs like Urban Nutrition Initiative and Teens 4 Good. Also featured were interviews and facts about teens’ favorite foods, a deconstruction of ethnic food stereotypes and a report from a National youth-run community-agriculture conference called Rooted in Community. You can see all these stories as well as more creative interpretations of the theme on POPPYN’s website: http://whatspoppyn.blogspot.com
Additionaly, four of the young POPPYN crew member had an opportunity to participate in the National Association for Media Literacy Education conference this July in Philadelphia. Our participants worked with youth from all over the country as part of the M3 (Modern Media Makers) camp, dedicating over 48 hours of their weekend to collaborative production of 5 short genre-specific film pieces that creatively interpret the definition of media literacy. See their amazing, hilarious and inspired work at the NAMLE M3 blog: http://namle.net/2011/08/18/modern-media-makers-m3-archive-project-philly-2011/
A big thank you to Mosi Blaylock, a UCCP Leaders Corps member who accompanied and supported the youth at M3 through the entire camp.
The 2011-2012 Youth Action Scholars are off to a great start! This past July, 20 high school students from a variety of schools and neighborhoods came together to take part in the six-week summer session kick-off of the program year. Led by Leader Corps members Kenny Williams-Medley and Earla Joseph, this year's YAS participants are looking at two important issues that affect their communities. Kenny's group is investigating Diversity and Immigration in Philadelphia, specficially looking at how immigration is affecting and changing the face of our city, as well as the unique set of issues and challenges immigrants (especially immigrant youth) and their communities face once they arrive here in Philadelphia. Earla's group is taking a closer look at the Juvenile Justice System, and the racial and socioeconomic inequalities which result in the incarceration of a disproportionate amount of poor and minority youth. The students worked hard to put together two interactive and engaging workshops on their respective topics, which they were able to practice for family and friends at the final event. This fall, their hard work will continue with the addition of a media component to each workshop, field trips to community organizations, presenting their workshops to peer and adult groups, and more. We are looking forward to a productive and inspriring year!
Every summer we provide the opportunity for a select group of past participants and Temple University students to participate in our Leadership Development Institute (LDI) to gain a working knowledge of our organization, the process of youth leadership development and project facilitation. Successful graduates of the LDI are eligible to become part of UCCP’s Leaders Corps, a dedicated group of talented young adults who facilitate all of our programs.
LDI participants are trained on hard skills of facilitation, project planning, curriculum development, issue research, and UCCP’s philosophy of youth-led project-based learning. As part of their training the LDI participants, like the youth they’ll be working with, have to collectively identify an issue, create a media project, prepare a presentation, and facilitate an activity. Through the experiential learning process, the LC-in-training gain a better understanding of the challenges they’ll face in supporting a youth-driven community engagement project.
Five outstanding young people completed the LDI this summer, producing a powerful project on the representation of women in the media. We are excited to welcome them to the Leaders Corps: Lynsey Graeff and Jessica Arce who will be working with POPPYN, Taneka Price and Adeoyin Otolorin ‘Dee’ who will be working with VOICES and Norman Scott who will be working with the POWER Internship.
Youth Action Scholars Taneka Price and Jabari Jackson, with the leadership of Kenny Williams-Medley and Alie Huxta presented a powerful interactive workshop to an audience of more than 30 youth and adults at the Free Minds Free People conference in Providence, RI. Workshop attendees got a "Reality Check" on the relationships between media ownership and representation and school funding and leadership. Content for the workshop has been developed by Youth Action Scholar participants in the "Education" and "Race, Culture & Mass Media" groups over the course of 2010-2011 program year. Thank you FMFP for the amazing opportunity to share and network with likeminded social justice educators!
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