Media Voices Youth Portal
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Images
Community of Interest
MVC Badge
Issues Cloud
Document
Media_Voices_Launch_Announce.pdf
Topics:
Target Audience:
Geographic Area:
Budget
Raised to date: $ 13,000.00
Estimate to complete: $ 115,000.00
Total Estimated Budget: $ 128,000.00
The budget numbers above are accurate as of 01/15/2010
Key Personnel
Len Morris
Editorial Director & Project Manager
Len Morris is the recipient of an Independent Filmmaker Award from The American Film Institute and a member of the Directors Guild of America. Len began his career working as a journalist in public radio in 1968. After completing a Masters in Broadcasting at Boston University in 1972, he trained as a film editor and cameraman.
In the early 1980’s, he worked at ABC News on the prime-time weekly news-magazine 20/20. As a producer and film editor, Len was involved with films on subjects as diverse as schizophrenia, environmental justice, interfaith and comparative religion and peacetime death in the military.
Establishing his independent production company, Galen Films, in New York City in 1983, Len worked for Home Box Office and NBC as a producer/director and also continued to freelance as a film and tape editor. He edited the Emmy Award-winning 25th anniversary special for PBS on the Kennedy assassination JFK: A Time Remembered, and was post-production producer and editor for two hours of the landmark 10-hour PBS series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews at WNET in New York.
Len directed the one-hour special Africa on the Move for the Global Hunger Project and produced and directed Stolen Childhoods, a feature documentary on global child labor. His most recent feature documentary, Rescuing Emmanuel, examined the plight of street children worldwide as reflected in the story of a single street boy, who attached himself to the crew during filming in Nairobi.
In addition to filmmaking, Len has taught and lectured at leading universities and at conferences around the world. He delivered the Frank Porter Graham Human Rights Lecture at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2005 and has also lectured at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. He has presented documentary footage on trafficking and child labor as part of the Ronald Brown Series of Lectures for the Congressional Black Caucus, at the United States Department of Labor, The World Bank and USAID. He was recently part of a global webcast and roundtable at the U.S. Department of Labor for World Day Against Child Labor, moderated by the U.S. Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis.
In 2008, Len established Media Voices for Children, an internet news agency for children’s human rights that is both an online community for activists and an educational resource and media library .
Steve Button
Web Designer/IT Consultant
Steve Button specializes in the development, design and implementation of interactive projects, and Media Voices is the coming together of many years of developing ways to communicate. Steve’s work is in developing and delivering targeted projects for clients in Europe and the US, usually, but not always, involving video as a prime source of content. These projects are designed to be multi-functional, working on the web, on disk and designed to be scalable. He also works on "digital delivery systems"- the design and development of replicable approaches to content development, management and distribution that constitute the "ecosystems" projects exist within. His portfolio can be viewed at http://annexe.squarespace.com/
Petra Lent McCarron
Producer
Petra Lent McCarron is an experienced television and film producer and editor. She co-produced Stolen Childhoods and Rescuing Emmanuel for Galen Films. She began her career at WNET (PBS) as an associate producer for Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. She also worked as an associate producer and stock footage researcher on Robert Moses for WNET and JFK: A Time Remembered for Obenhaus Films and The Susskind Company. As a film editor, Petra was a contributing editor to Stolen Childhoods, Rescuing Emmanuel and Big Guns Talk.
Funders
| Name | Amount | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ramsay-Merriam Foundation | $ 3,000.00 | 02/03/2010 | |
| Cindy and Rob Doyle | $ 5,000.00 | 12/27/2009 | |
| The Dickler Family Foundation | $ 5,000.00 | 08/27/2009 |
Short Synopsis
Media Voices for Children is an Internet news agency for children’s rights. MVC centralizes media content, conversations and tools for educators, youth, journalists and the general public, to educate about the impacts of poverty and globalization on the world’s children. We are creating an online community of interest to raise awareness about what children need to thrive.
We seek funding to create a new section of Media Voices specific to youth, where their videos and photography can be displayed and their thoughts communicated to each other via forums.
Description/Treatment
Media Voices is designed with several core constituencies in mind: the general public, youth, the media, the activist community, teachers and students. We have designed the site to be eye-catching and easily navigable for the general public. We are relying on first-class design, photography and content to set the site apart and make you want to explore. We are bringing forward information and resources that the general public has little prior experience with.
Features like the MVC Tag Cloud and Media Timeline and the photo exhibit are designed to appeal to younger users. Young people have created some of our best content. With the proposed Youth Portal, we want to expand this area dramatically and have many more postings and forums by and for youth.
The Media Voices Youth Portal will create a home page entry point for students and educators to use the Media Voices site. The portal will include interactive elements that enable youth to post and share content. The platform will enable students and teachers to post innovative projects offering solutions or increasing awareness.
From a content perspective, we want the portal to take students and teachers to an area that is organized specifically for them by subject area. Each topic would have a landing page where quick stats and an overview will be provided. We'd like to develop geo maps that draw on real databases to show the distribution of some problems like child labor, hunger & malnutrition, trafficking, HIV, malaria and TB. There will be forums where youth can contribute comments, photos and videos, upcoming events and news and additional links and resources for taking action. We envision streaming film festivals, art competitions, creative writing and other approaches that will appeal to young people.
For teachers, there will be links and suggestions of materials within the MVC libraries to use as resources in their classroom teaching. We will also draw upon our awareness of current issues, campaigns and programs from Media Voices to enhance the content on the Youth Portal. We are approaching the NEA and AFT for technical assistance in providing grade-appropriate materials.
The Youth Portal aims to use the power of social networking and blogging to create and nurture a global community of politically and socially engaged young people. The impetus for this idea comes from the belief that any resource that intends to speak of the aspirations and conditions of children must include their point of view, vision, creativity, voice and expressions of political action. The Convention on the Rights of the Child acknowledges and protects the rights of children and youth to free expression and we wish to reflect this at MVC. The Media Voices Youth Portal will draw upon the diversity of MVC media libraries and contributors, while allowing youth to add their own presence to this community. Their input needn’t be limited to a single organization or campaign. Within the content-rich environment of MVC, students and youth contributors can recommend media, voice their opinions and share their experiences about real problems of daily life, getting a chance to go to school, cultural barriers to girls being educated, early marriage, racial and class bias directed at indigenous children, the hardships of poverty. We intend to make it possible, for instance, for a school to sponsor another school, or for students to select or create a project that they can become a part of directly. In setting up the Youth Portal in a way that allows for children from all over the world to contribute, we can help our own children see their counterparts in places they know little about in a new light, with increased understanding and knowledge.
We see around us every day the idealism and energy of youth looking for direction. Their willingness and desire to help needs to be channeled properly and that's something we want to include in this portal - opportunities and means to take action and make a difference.