Foster Youth Writing and Education Project https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/proposals-2011/foster-youth-writing-and-education-project https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/@@site-logo/sitelogo-75x75.png

Foster Youth Writing and Education Project

Additional Information
Used for	(1) to improve the reading, writing, and job preparation skills for participating youth; (2) to provide a forum where foster youth can voice their opinions regarding the foster care system and other issues; and (3) to raise awareness in foster communities and non-foster communities of the experiences disadvantaged youth face and to ultimately affect foster youth policy.
Benefits	Over the years, the foster-youth written articles have provided a great service to their “mainstream” peers, to policymakers, and to the community at large; they have de-stigmatized certain issues (such as mental health challenges), and they have shined a light on shortcomings in the system. They have become their own advocates.
Proposal Description	Founded in 1988, when the Supreme Court’s Hazelwood decision effectively legitimized censorship in public school newspapers, L.A. Youth has grown to become the voice for teens in the Greater Los Angeles area, and the organization itself has established a leadership position among advocates for youth. In fact, our strong position on the advocacy front inspired our board to revisit L.A. Youth’s mission statement in early 2010. The new mission statement succinctly describes the power of youth journalism: L.A. Youth is a leading advocacy voice for teens through journalism. We use media as a tool for young people to examine themselves, their communities and the world at large. While that statement conveys our overarching goals, the original mission statement defines our objectives: (1) to provide teens with the highest level of journalism education, civic literacy and job skills; (2) to strengthen and build the agency’s relationships with more and more teachers to bring relevant issues into the classroom and improve the quality of education; and (3) to reach out to the community to better educate policy makers about teen issues; create a more positive image of teens in the mainstream media; and raise the credibility and awareness of L.A. Youth. As those objectives indicate, students need experiential education; teachers need assistance in leading issue discussions; and the public needs to know what’s going on in the hearts and minds of young people. L.A. Youth answers those needs, and few youth-serving programs in the Los Angeles area can make that claim. The 28-page newspaper that is published six times per year is created by a diverse group of students representing public and private schools, foster youth-serving group homes, and juvenile justice facilities. Most are from non-Caucasian, low-income households. Their articles, essays, illustrations, and reviews reach an offline readership estimated at 350,000, with tens of thousands more taking in the content when they visit the L.A. Youth website. More than 1,100 middle- and high-school teacher subscribers, representing the 400 schools that receive L.A. Youth, utilize the newspaper’s content in their classrooms, and they have come to value L.A. Youth as a curricular tool. Appointed and elected officials and mainstream media also recognize the value of L.A. Youth. Stories that originally appeared in L.A. Youth have been picked up by local newspapers and radio programs, national radio syndicates, and even 60 Minutes. Student staff members’ investigations have changed policy on the state and national level. An annual average of 700 youth, including nearly 40 students at our satellite bureau in Watts, participate in producing the newspaper. They also share their opinions and insights when we host structured roundtable discussions, sponsor essay contests, and solicit letters to the editor. Our adult staff and more than 40 professional journalists who serve the program as volunteers provide one-on-one mentoring, helping student staff members gain critical skills that will serve them throughout their lives. In addition to the literacy skills developed by virtue of writing and editing a newspaper article, student staff members learn how to: conduct interviews and in-depth research; engage in critical thinking; work in a team; fact-check; meet deadlines; respect diversity; and use technology. Given the opportunity for skills development, L.A. Youth can be viewed as a viable job-training program. And because participating youth are given ownership of the process, they also acquire strong self-esteem that they can apply to the development and delivery of those skills. In addition, for youth seeking a more intensive experience, L.A. Youth offers an annual 6-week Summer Writing and Graphic Arts Workshop. Piloted in 2003, L.A. Youth’s Foster Youth Writing and Education Project brings all the benefits of program participation to our community’s most marginalized youth. Recruited through our well-established partnerships with foster youth-serving agencies throughout the Greater Los Angeles area, the youth are mentored by staff and volunteers as they identify an issue they would like to write about and as they develop their articles for print. The process often leads to visceral explorations of some of the greatest challenges facing these youth, and they ultimately write candidly about their mental health issues, their histories of substance abuse, their experiences within extremely dysfunctional families, and both the shortfalls and the benefits of growing up in the foster care system. The strategies that L.A. Youth utilizes in delivering the Foster Youth Writing and Education Project also promote systemic change, and these strategies are reinforced through my ongoing service as a member of the California Supreme Court Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care. Through this and other linkages to state and regional activities, the project has the capacity to improve outcomes not only for participating youth, but also for their peers throughout the foster care system. The contributions of participating foster youth are far-reaching. L.A. Youth has an ongoing partnership with Represent, the New York City-based national publication that focuses on youth in the foster care and probation systems. Represent regularly reprints articles written by L.A. Youth’s participating foster youth. Through additional targeted mailings and L.A. Youth’s website, which reproduces all printed articles and maintains an archive of back issues, stakeholders across the country benefit from the project’s insights and impact. As an example, in late 2009, L.A. Youth received a request from a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Coordinator in Pinal County, Arizona. As he wrote, “In Pinal County we have about 50 CASA volunteers advocating for over 80 foster children. I’d like to use the stories as a learning tool for understanding the kids better regarding their fears, anger and/or anxieties while in the foster care system.” Our need for your renewed and enhanced partnership is acute. Many philanthropies that once supported L.A. Youth have revisited their guidelines and are focusing on safety net providers and the types of community-based organizations that provide basic services. While this change in priorities is relevant in the current climate, L.A. Youth also is relevant. Youth News Service – Los Angeles cannot necessarily claim to provide a basic service, but freedom of expression is a basic right. And encouraging youth to practice that right, while investigating the issues that impact their peers and their communities, makes for viable education and ultimate workforce preparedness. Foster youth particularly need the hands-on, experiential education provided by L.A. Youth. In fact, without such a substantive intervention, their futures are grim. According to statistics, nearly half of foster youth will emancipate from (age out of) the system without completing high school, more than 50% of emancipated youth will be unemployed; nearly 40% will become homeless within 18 months of leaving the system, and approximately 20% will be incarcerated within two years of emancipation.