Hi! Welcome to Verde Smoke

Today we ask you to help get the media to cover Saturdays Youth Town Hall as much as they cover the murders and other negative actions in our MA communities. Tomorrow we have several hundred “Young Agents of Change” coming together to discuss how they will make a difference in their community. Send the alert below to you media outlets and share as part of your status update.

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Event Advisory

Event Media Contact
Greta Teller; Teller Marketing Solutions
(e) GTeller@TellerMarketingSolutions.com
(m) 860.712.3124

Eric Thomas, the Hip Hop Preacher, Highlights 2011 Town Hall Leadership Event.

MassHousing and Masslmpact Bring Massachusetts’ Students Together at Harvard Law School on October 22nd to Engage Youth as Agents of Change in Their Communities.

What: 2011 Town Hall

Beginning at 8:30am, the format of the day will open and close with keynote speaker, Eric Thomas, the nationally-renowned hip hop preacher. Thomas is a motivational speaker known for his engagingly personal approach with messages that are both dynamic & inspiring speaking to youth and adults alike.

Produced by AbekaM, the 2011 Town Hall is an event open to those ages 13-18 who live in major urban cities across Massachusetts. Through a series of conversations and breakout sessions held during the day, this event hopes to encourage youth leaders by raising the bar of expectations set for young people. Topics that will be covered include strategies to overcome the challenges of education, violence and poverty and raise the expectations of youth to create future leaders. To date there are more than 350 registered.

The event is hosted by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, is sponsored by MassHousing and Masslmpact
When: Saturday, October 22nd, 8:30am-3:00pm / Book Signing 3:30-4:30pm
Where: Harvard University Law School at 1563 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA
Who: Eric Thomas, Keynote Speaker

300+ youth (age 13-18 y/0) from throughout Massachusetts, Participants

**Media will have opportunity to interview Eric Thomas on Friday, October 21st. Please send all requests to Greta Teller at GTeller@TellerMarketingS0lutions.com by Wednesday, 10/19.

About MassHousing
MassHousing. the state’s affordable housing bank, supports the creation, preservation and long-term viability of affordable homeownership and rental housing opportunities for Massachusetts residents with modest incomes. MassHousing is a self sustaining agency and does not use taxpayer dollars in its programs. For more information, visit www.MassHousing.com.

About Eric Thomas
Eric Thomas is a nationally—renown speaker, educator, author, activist and minister who delivers a high energy message about living up to your full potential and greatness and how to break the cycles of crime, hopelessness and despair that many face daily. Known for his engagingly personal approach, his messages are both dynamic & inspiring. Eric has electrified audiences ranging
from Fortune 500 companies to urban educators, collegiate athletic programs and inner city youth development agencies with the message of his own life’s struggles and the principles, insights and strategies he used to overcome them. For more information, visit www.ETTheHipHopPreacher.corn.

About AhekaM
AbekaM’s mission is to create sustainable partnerships in support of local models of social change for under-served families and communities traditionally excluded from resource rich experiences. AbekaM envisions a world where multi—sector relationships unleash and mobilize the necessary resources to renew, amplify and protect the gifts in our target communities and for the people
who live within them. For more information, visit www.AbekaM.org.

Here’s few of the photos I took as a volunteer mentor on a day field trip around Boston with three Peace in Focus youth participants and photographer and workshop supporter, Thaddeus Miles. This community mapping outing was part of a two-week workshop on using photography as a tool for conflict resolution and youth voice, held at Madison Park Village housing development in Roxbury and Northeastern University. Check out the youth’s photo’s on a map on Flickr or the group’s blog at http://peaceinfocus.blogspot.com/

Through collaborative photography and leadership training programs, Peace in Focus provides low-income youth around the world with innovative tools to transform conflict and advocate for social change in their communities. More about Peace in Focus at www.peaceinfocus.org

(Give it a sec to download all the fun media files before you begin by clicking the arrows. OR view it full screen on http://prezi.com).

Also, download the handout/outline.

See copies of diagrams, timeline, charts, etc on Flickr

See higher resolution versions of the embedded videos here:

YouthBuild Lawrence
Keep Lawrence Clean commercial

YouthBuild Lawerence
Making Photo Map

Drishya Bangalore
Transmedia storytelling (puppetry) slideshow

Drishya Bangalore
Top Story (transmedia puppetry performance, June 2008)

An MIT Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning course (that I’m auditing), entitled Media Technology and Community Building, along with progressive community members, has been meeting twice weekly with a core group of Framingham youth and community activists since April 7th, 2009. The class has been helping the youth to analyze and activate their own social networks, both through classic mechanism and using new media technologies such as websites, cell phones, and user-created audio and video. Using these newly obtained skills the youth were challenged to activate their networks, to mobilize their peers, friends, and community to participate in a game on May 9th, 2009.

The game, called Snap Shot Framingham, featured youth-generated photographs which will be used to create a website that encouraged participants to explore their expressions of Downtown Framingham. In response to prompts given by the MIT class and community members, 4 teams of 3 or 4 youth, armed with digital cameras, spread throughout the downtown area taking pictures on a clue-based treasure hunt. Afterward, the photos were judged on creativity and composition, then teams discussed the significance of being involved as actors for change in the Framingham community. Lunch was sponsored by local businesses of the FBA. The overall purpose of the game was to empower the young adults of Framingham to become actors of change in their community, creating an awareness of the social and economic concerns facing the revitalization of the downtown area, using new media as a tool.

Check out the final photos at http://framinghamgame.ning.com/.

Find more photos like this on Framingham Game

How I eased into rewriting a memo about my thesis from the comfortable spot of a reflective blog entry…

It’s February school vacation this week. I know this, because sitting across from me on my morning bus commute is a foursome of teenage girls. Even though I’m rocking tunes from my iPhone and ruminating about morning meetings, they catch my eye.

One girl with red hair and pale skin is wearing Ugs, another is wearing a hijab with a pink sweatshirt and Converse sneakers. Surprisingly, it’s not their fashion or cultural variety that holds my attention—it’s the moment they all whip out a variety of cells phones and start typing away while chatting aloud. When one girl giggles about this new song she loves, she whips out an iPod and two the girls share the earbuds to listen, while browsing the web on an iPhone to find photos of the artist. They exchange numbers and plot how they’ll spend their day.

Could I tap their ease and enthusiasm around media technology to engage them in making a change? Or how could I incorporate this activism into their school or out-of-school activities?

You’re cordially invited to watch MIT@Lawrence’s youth celebration event, hosted in the 2nd floor conference room of the MIT Museum (265 Massachusetts Avenue) on May 9th, 2008. This event featured both presentations by student workshop participants and and free ice cream!

As part of this year’s MIT@Lawrence youth development programs, masters in City Planning student Anne Schweiger worked with the Lawrence Family Development Charter School to implement an unprecedented commitment to connect both staff and student volunteers to supporting the educational development of Lawrence youth. Through both the efforts of Anne and her crew of volunteers, MIT@Lawrence has been able to host monthly field trips since Fall 2007 for over 50 middle school students and teachers to partake in sustained workshops with staff and volunteers from MIT departements and projects including Media Lab, Teacher Education Program, MIT Museum, Project for New Media Literacies, Massachusetts Academic Games League, Architecture department and more. In addition, volunteer from MIT also visited the school to work one-on-one with teachers and students in Lawrence to further the learning and build relationships. The day also featured a college tour for YouthBuild Lawrence members who have been working on organizing projects to fight littering in their city.

For more information, visit http://www.mitatlawrence.net.

I have to admit, I procrastinated a bit around building the rough draft of my final photo essays.  I had all the pieces (in fact, too many pieces) and ideas, but I felt like I was back in high school again, facing down the insurmountable beast of a final paper of which I had too much I wanted to say.  Usually, once I get into working, it flows easily once I get started but it’s taking that first leap.  With this project, the themes I wanted to cover and the enigma that is Lawrence’s identity seemed like a black hole, that I’ve circling around like a hesitant but curious animal.

Like a bit of divine providence, a spark of motivation fell in my lap.  Fellow MIT@Lawrence researcher Anne Schwieger asked if I wanted to help out with a day of workshops at MIT she was planning for a group of Lawrence middle school youth.  As you may remember, working with youth doing media and technology projects is one of my favorite things to do.  SO, I had all these photography books out from the library, cameras available from department, and hundreds of my own photos printed out in color…all that easily equals a digital photography workshop.

Because of bus delays, I ended up with the same group of youth all day.  I walked them through a condensed version of how to look at photos of landscape, thinking about composition but also about language and stories they tell.  Then I spread out all my little photos on the table and asked “What do you think? Did I capture Lawrence?”  Many of them recognized the places I photographed but said I missed the right spots.  One boy was amazed that I had captured the gas station by his house when the gas prices were so much lower.  One other girl was adamant that I should have taken photos of the library.  And yes, a few boys sat back and refused to identify ANY photos (mine or from the books of Callahan, Lange, and Vergara) that were interesting.  I had them pick one, tape it up on the white board, and tell me a little about what they liked/disliked about it (a mini critique was born).

I quietly took out my audio recorder and hit record.  The youth realized it was on, protested a bit, then tried out their singing voices to watch the levels change.  And then I asked them to talk about Lawrence as a place, to describe how the places and characters in my photos showed the Lawrence that’s in their mind’s eye.  They spoke, upon my prompting, about how they consider the past of Lawrence, namely the mills, in terms of what they see today and what they hope for in the future.

After lunch, we took the cameras and I challenged them to capture the landscape of MIT.  The youth were exuberant to get out of buildings, to run around the lawn, to sit in a classroom, to see the Stata building and sit inside the Media Lab.  We tried to look at most of the photos before they boarded the buses for home and I was amazed.  Yes, there were posed photos of themselves and silly snapshots of MIT students, but there were also snippets of where I spent most days from a very different angle.

And I realized I had my new storylines for my essay.

I just finished a digital storytelling and mapping workshop that included over 10 youth who stayed creative and excited to share their stories even in 90 degree heat without AC! It’s a project I’ve been working on pretty much since the beginning of this VISTA year, by meeting with folks from the Lower Roxbury Empowerment Coalition, a group of housing developments and non-profit programs who are trying to create inter-neighborhood partnerships and tap into Northeastern University outreach programs. Jayme Bonds, who works tirelessly at Mandela Homes, participated in one of my train-the-trainers this spring and got pretty adamant about me working with youth leaders from her summer programs. We decided to open it up to as many local housing development summer programs as we could get together, and it worked out well. We even got a couple participants from Worcester!

I gathered some MassIMPACT folks and got Colleen Kelly, now former CTC VISTA and employee at Emerson College, to come help facilitate. The group of youth were all girls except for one, well spoken young man George, who all had interesting and personal stories to share. It was a big group for a digital storytelling workshop (over 15 folks working on stories at once) but it worked out fine to split the group into two story circles and we had enough experienced storytellers floating around to help with the one-on-one support. Several of the youth also really excelled at the technical side, so they were finished with their stories by the beginning of the third day. So we had them publish their stories on StoriesForChange.net and help build the Google Map…and then show others how to do it as well. We’re hoping to do a few follow-up two-hour workshops over the summer to help support these youth in their quest to teach digital storytelling to other younger residents.

I also owe big thanks to Royal from Mandela CLC and Paulette at Camfield Estates for hosting, and for Jayme Bonds from Mandela Homes for providing the food. The final stories are posted at StoriesforChange.net http://storiesforchange.net/event/teen_digital_storymapping_bootcamp and all linked off the Google Map at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101507654869685312962.00000113773a71cb7665b&z=10&om=1
There’s also more photos on Flickr.