Our City, Our Voices

Short Synopsis

Our City, Our Voices (OCOV) is a community journalism project that builds media skills amongst Philadelphia’s immigrant community, low wage workers, and youth. The aim of OCOV has been to provide low-income communities with the tools and skills to tell their stories and then distribute these stories through the Web and other mediums, using this as the basis for civic engagement. 

Description/Treatment

Our City, Our Voices (OCOV) provides low-income communities in Philadephia with the tools and skills to tell their stories and distribute them through the Web and other mediums. The ability to tell and present compelling stories, and also distribute them beyond one’s immediate community, has become increasingly important in this new digital age.

Through this joint initiative of the Media Mobilizing Project and Juntos, our goals are fourfold:

• Train people to make video newscasts about issues affecting them in an attempt to build a coherent community out of the fragmented migrants, workers and youth across the city. 
• Provide these individuals with hardware (computers, routers) and Internet access so they have the basic tools to get information and communicate in the digital age.
• Create a community Web portal (www.mediamobilizing.org) and other forms of distribution to share stories within affected communities and beyond
• Utilize community media production as the basis of a new strategy around civic engagement for disenfranchised communities. 

In 2008, OCOV trained 100 low-wage workers, immigrants and young people in storytelling and community journalism, basic video and audio production, and computer and web skills. Further, 40 people received hardware and access to the Internet through our digital inclusion program.

We have worked with members from the following organizations in this program: Juntos, a community based organizationfor Mexican immigrants; the Philadelphia Student Union; The Taxi Workers Alliance of Philadelphia; UNITE HERE; the Haitian Community Help Center; the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia; Nationalities Service Center; SEIU 32BJ; and SEIU Health Care PA.

Furthermore, through this project our learners have created over 15 short videos on topics ranging from education access for immigrants to workers rights, teacher quality and the plight of day laborers. Videos can be accessed at http://ourcityourvoices.org/ and http://ourcityourvoices.blogspot.com/.

We have received local and national press coverage, as well as grants from the Media and Democracy Coalition, the Social Science Research Council, the Media Democracy Fund, the Knight Foundation, the Media Justice Fund, and the Bread and Roses Community Fund.