The City of Seattle Department of Information Technology has partnered with the Adobe Foundation and Reel Grrls to greatly expand the Adobe Youth Voices program in the Seattle area. Seattle is home to Adobe’s Fremont campus, which employs about 500 people. This school year, over 600 youth at 20 schools and community organizations will work on projects that allow them to develop new skills and express their voice about issues they care about. Stay tuned for some amazing media!
Projects will be showcased here in Seattle at SIFF and via the international Youth Voices web site, where they’ll join other youth producers from around the world. Reel Grrls, the award winning media training program for girls, is coordinating the Seattle program and just finished training teachers from the participating sites. All sites are receiving curriculum, software and mentoring. Adobe offers free curricula and tools for educators on their website as well. Based on the best practices of educators from around the world, the curricula promotes youth expression, creativity, and engagement, helping young people build critical 21st century technology and life skills.
David Keyes from the City’s Community Technology Program helped recruit and select participating sites. The schools and organizations chosen will give voice to a rich diversity of youth. Partnering with the City is also enabling Adobe and Reel Grrls to leverage other support that the City has provided through its Technology Matching Fund and cable broadband grants. The City will continue to help advise projects on creating media for civic engagement and encourage submission of completed videos for screening on the Seattle Channel.
The sites selected to participate are:
Seattle Public Schools (The World School -BOC, Pinehurst Middle School, Aki Kurose Middle School) Chinese Information and Service Center (CISC), Meadowdale High School in the Edmunds School District, Bellevue Big Picture, the Seattle –King County Metrocenter YMCA’s Y-Tech program, Arts Corps, Youth In Focus, Multi-Media Resource Training Institute (MMRTI), Unified Outreach, Technology Access Foundation (TAF), Longhouse Media/Native Lens, KCTS 9, and City of Seattle RecTech Computer learning labs at Garfield Teen Life Center, Delridge, Rainier, Southwest, South Park and Yesler Community Centers.
2012 Seattle Adobe Youth Voices teachers’ orientation at SIFF