Cliff Hahn Youth Media Consulting

YOUTH MEDIA – THE CHANGE AGENT

After several years of successfully working as journalists and online producers in the media industry, my wife and I have decided to take one year off and travel the world.

Not as a tourist, I get bored too quickly for that.

No, I want to return to my earlier work that I still find exciting and meaningful after a decade: Youth Media.

My dream is to visit as many youth programs as possible in one year, all over the world, to offer my services and expertise in youth media training, setting up a youth media program or ways to help young people find their voice on issues in their lives. I have seen from direct experience that youth media can offer genuine positive change for a kid, and also help improve the lives of their peers and communities.

So, I created this web site and have written to lots of very cool youth programs like yours to tell you about my dream, and hope you'll consider sponsoring a visit to your organization to conduct youth media training
sessions – for a day, a weekend, or maybe longer!

No matter how many programs I'm able to visit in a year, I know that the experience will create positive and meaningful change for all the kids who participate and, no doubt, for me too!

WHY YOUTH MEDIA?

Because youth media creates change on both a personal and community level.

Because youth media truly empowers youth – for a lifetime.

Because youth media uses the dynamic of society's greatest power: mass commuication.

For over a decade, I have worked with many international organizations and seen the benefits of using youth media in empowering young people and creating change – within communities, organizations and kids themselves.

On issues such as child poverty, HIV/AIDS, violence, the environment and education, young people have been given the skills to speak out through projects using print, video, radio and online media. Having a voice allows young people to take action to improve their lives and the lives of other children in their community.

They develop communication skills, team work, leadership, critical thinking, and powers of self-expression. Through youth media projects, children are no longer just recipients of development programs but active participants. Kids can then use these new powers to speak out in their communities through the use of media.

As a youth development consultant and former New York Director of Children’s Express, an award-winning non-profit that created youth media programs in the U.S., UK and Japan, I understand the everyday pressures of youth service work. But I also know that youth media can be a great tool for addressing many of the same issues you are hoping to improve and offer a wide range of benefits to young people, your organization and your community:

Benefits to Youth:

Learning skills to become an active and useful member of the community, engaged in helping to find solutions
Educational outcomes: reading, writing, research, communication, issues awareness, media literacy, audio/video/internet skills
Youth development outcomes: critical thinking, increased self-esteem, creativity, citizenship, leadership, teamwork
None of this would work if it wasn’t also…fun!

Benefits to Organization:

Increased visibility in the media, the community, international organizations and funders
Project with training materials and methodology that can be easily adapted and replicated
Promotion and spread of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Benefits to Community:

Status of children raised in the community benefits all through empowering kids, addressing the issues that they feel are most important
Peer to Peer Education – on many important youth issues, education and outreach among kids is very effective
Young people will have a say and can help offer solutions important to the community

Training Program
The young people in your organization will quickly develop basic media and youth development skills through a fun and highly interactive training program. The program allows young people 8-18 of any background, educational level or economic class to participate. I have helped to develop a system which allows any young person to participate regardless of literacy, education or background. Participants in the training program will not only learn basic media skills such as reporting and editing, but will also begin developing their own voices, views and opinions.

The change in young people can be immediate -- and last a lifetime!

Take a look at some previous youth media projects I have created, or clips I have written about the youth media field.

Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about this proposal, or discussing ways youth media can be a great benefit to your current work. I’m happy to offer a more detailed proposal and more information.

Thank you and feel free to e-mail me at cliff_hahn@yahoo.com. Thanks for your time!