One Summer Chicago 2016: The News School Dynamic Youth Program during Work

The One Summer Chicago Youth Employment Program began Monday, Jun 27, 2016, and sought to place over 25,000 youth, ages 14-24 into a summer module that consisted of work experience, internships, and some artistic outside-the-box girl module approaches. When a module finished for many of a participating supervision authorized institutions, open and county organizations and private business collaborators, many girl and immature adults came divided from their summer module knowledge with opposite results! One such county entity was Saint Agatha Church, that motionless to dedicate to a summer girl module model that sought to sight youth, ages 16-24, to turn approved Citizen Journalists! The module was an finish seven-week category that challenged girl who indicated that they had an seductiveness in essay and could predict a career trek in journalism! They had to dedicate to attending on a unchanging basis, attend each day, learn and finish homework, and be peaceful to rivet in a severe boot-camp-like, mentally severe essay enterprise.

In a beginning, a lead teachers, Mr. DiMarkco Chandler, Ms. Cathy Milne, and myself wanted to sight and enthuse approximately ten girl to turn Citizen Journalists. Therefore, a module pattern directed them to write and news on stories that were about certain and prolific calm relations to the Black and Brown communities where they resided. The suspicion of a girl training to support a narratives that report a certain and prolific people and programs in North Lawndale, Roseland and Englewood was lovely and indispensable in sequence to fight a assault and apprehension that a internal and inhabitant media daily highlights.

To a pleasing delight, 5 of 16 immature people will be graduating from a module on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, during 10 a.m CDT, during Saint Agatha Church, 3147 West Douglas Boulevard. These 5 immature people have already combined stories for a online journal entitled, The Public Slate, are primed to write for Guardian Liberty Voice, and some-more importantly, Windy City Highlights, a imitation repository that a students created.

I am utterly unapproachable to contend that a module during Saint Agatha’s was an implausible arrangement of an classification with idealist leadership. Father Larry Dowling, Jeannette Phillips; a mom who volunteered each day, and instructors worked tirelessly to beam and approach a immature people to use a English denunciation correctly. Also, critical to a success of a module was a Resource Development Specialist who kept intensity bureaucracy from gloomy a results!

I witnessed growth in all 5 of a students. In fact, it was the kind of alleviation that we could never have imagined! The English denunciation is underneath technological conflict and a Black, and Brown immature people are apropos a victims. Moreover, as a by-product, they are unwell miserably in their abilities to read, write and comprehend. The News School’s Save a English Language summer module model was a proof-of-concept plan that declares our immature people can learn and are encouraged to tell certain and heartwarming stories, as against to a distressing screams and videos that swamp a amicable media worlds! The glow and appetite that we saw in their eyes when they were given assignments to cover, like a grand opening of a play “From a Barrio to a Boardroom,” a life story of author and businessman Robert Renteria, lets me know that we can and contingency reason a immature people to aloft expectations. The dual Citizen Journalists who were interviewing and essay reviews of a play were as most a story that night as a 30 and girl who acted in a play!

I am vouchsafing everybody know that The News School is a unique, outside-of-the-box program tool to re-engage girl with reading and essay and a art of communication. The preparation group is dedicated to Saving a English Language and encourages each chairman who has a enterprise to examine broadcasting as a intensity career to cruise apropos partial of a flourishing cadre of citizen journalists. Furthermore, once a chairman graduates from The News School Boot-Camp they have grown skills that will open many doors in associated industries.

For serve information about a module in Chicago hit me, James Cannon during  (312)806-6617, or Father Larry Dowling during (773)522-1354.

Opinion by James Cannon
Edited by The News School

Images Courtesy of Griselda Vicario – Used With Permission

  Chicago, Citizen Journalists, journalism, Saint Agatha Church, The News School