Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. She was recently inspired by some presentations at a conference on youth media and education around the world. She writes in to share her thoughts.
Last weekend I attended Media: Overseas Conversations 5, an International Conference on Media, Education and Youth. Media educators from the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Europe shared information on their programs and the current challenges they face.
This event was an opportunity to learn how nations with histories of state control and censorship are creating spaces for young people to think critically about media. One of the most compelling presentations was by Hyeon-Seon Jeong, a professor from the Gyeongin National University of Education, who shared the difficulties of teaching a subject that can be frightening for established institutions.
Similar to those in the U.S., most media literacy programs in Korea are taught by media activists, workers and artists through extracurricular and after-school programs. Ms. Jeong described some of the varying definitions of "media literacy" among practitioners. One group is the "protectionists," who are concerned about media's potential to be a destructive force: they advocate for young people to limit their time with media. For example, the government is concerned with video game addiction among people in their teens and twenties as a public health issue, sparked by the death in 2005 of a 28-year-old South Korean man who collapsed after playing an online video game for 50 hours. Another group is the activists who see media's ability to foster civic engagement — recently, young people have used online networks to organize protests of the government's policy to import American beef, using digital cameras and mobile phones to document and disseminate evidence of their activities. And then there are educators who want to prioritize the development of communication skills. Ms. Jeong has collaborated with language education teachers on a curriculum that looked critically at commercials and websites. But she raised the question, is it possible to teach media literacy divorced from social and political practices?
If you would like to get involved in this international dialogue, mark your calendars for 2010. That's when the World Summit on Media for Children and Youth is happening in Karlstad, Sweden. Their call for proposals is still open. You can also email info[at]wskarlstad2010.se.
It often surprises people that a "TV show" like P.O.V. has a project like Youth Views, which works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use documentary film as a tool for youth engagement. Irene Villaseñor, P.O.V.'s Youth Views Manager, tells us more about what she does, and how to get films "out of the screening room and into the streets."
When I first joined the Youth Views Project, other youth media and youth-serving organizations told me they were curious about P.O.V.'s interest in working with young people. Quite simply, Youth Views was created to carry out P.O.V.'s mission to explore the potential of independent media in public life by utilizing the power of storytelling as a catalyst for thought, discussion, and action among young people.
In the spirit of building community and fostering social responsibility, Youth Views trains young people to use media to creatively and effectively reach their educational and community-based goals. Last fall, I wrote an article for the Youth Media Reporter about how we have collaborated with youth organizers and media producers.
It takes more than just showing up with a film and doing a Q&A afterwards if you want to make a deep impact with viewers — especially the local community. Young people need to go beyond simply making and screening a film. They need to learn how to engage an audience, present community issues for social change, and partner with affiliated organizations. They must effectively use their products as resources for education and action — an approach that fosters both the long-term growth of young producers and the youth media field itself.
This is what Youth Views does — it trains young people in using media for social change.
Read the rest of the article to find out about how P.O.V. films have been used to bring youth communities together.
Befriend Youth Views on MySpace.
Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. Youth Views is a project that works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use P.O.V. films as a tool for youth engagement. Irene writes in today to talk about how communities can organize around the 2008 P.O.V. film Election Day to reduce voter disenfranchisement, and her own experiences on Super Tuesday with the Asian Pacific American community.
On July 1, P.O.V. will broadcast Election Day, a film by Katy Chevigny that combines 11 stories that were shot around the country on November 2, 2004. The film focuses on how incredibly varied our voting experiences are across the country — we see stories of activists on the Pine Ridge Reservation as they mobilize Native voters, advocates in New York City that want to unleash the voting power of ex-convicts, and a Republican committee man in Chicago that wants to ensure that Republican voters aren't intimidated at polling stations, among other scenes from election day 2004.
This wide-angle view reveals the barriers to civic participation that some communities must overcome in order to have their votes count. The film can be a powerful eye-opener, especially for citizens who blame voters for the electoral scandals in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.
Working with this film inspired me to reflect on how my own community, Asian Pacific Americans, struggles with voter disenfranchisement. Since May is Asian Pacific Heritage month, this is one of the best times to delve deeper into our legacies and assess how much progress has been made.
We still have a way to go.
Since 1988, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) has been monitoring our community's participation in local and national elections. In a 2006 report to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which was created to eliminate literacy tests, poll taxes and other barriers to voting), AALDEF identified that Asian Americans continue to experience racial discrimination, harassment, and institutional barriers at polls.
AALDEF's latest report, Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections, cites incidents of anti-Asian voter disenfranchisement in 25 cities across the nation. These statistics called me forth to get involved. On Super Tuesday, I volunteered to survey Asian American voters about their experience, ensure that translators and translated materials were available, refer people to AALDEF's complaint hotline, and speak to the press about the situation.
During my shift, I discussed with the other volunteers how Election Day could be an incredible resource for people who wanted to mobilize communities for the 2008 elections and examine what deters individuals and communities from political life.
If you want to borrow Election Day for a community or classroom screening, sign up on P.O.V.'s Community Events Planner. For information on a range of election-year issues, check out P.O.V.'s Why Vote? website. And if you would like to get involved with AALDEF's Asian American Democracy Project, visit their website for more information.
