DUCK HILL
Located in Duck Hill, Mississippi, Youth Innovation Movement/Solutions, Inc. (YIMS) was founded in 1988 to provide local youth with solutions for leadership, education communication and technology. The organization's founders, Al and Drustella White, manage the organization's programs with a nine-member board elected from among the youth participants. Youth also serve as coordinator staff. The program serves rural youth from three towns in Montgomery County: Duck Hill, Kilmichael and Winona. The Video Documentation Program is one example of the type of programming made available to youth YIMS. Some 60 youth ages 6-19 participated in YIMS' year round.
The Video Documentation Program concept surfaced in 1999 as a result of conversations that occurred during the six workshops held as part of the MIRA project. The process of collecting information about local people's skills and experience to identify local assets revealed to participants the void of documentation of history and significant contributions of people located within Montgomery County - especially those contributions made by African Americans. Al White's experience in video production and the participants' strong desires to preserve and promote the contributions and experiences of their elders led to the video documentation effort. The youth were responsible for putting together the proposal and budget, and strategies for long-term sustainability. The initial subject was Lucy Campbell, a Duck Hill elder who wrote three
widely used hymnals. Since that time, some 10 elders have been interviewed - in 2-10 minute segments. In addition, the following video services are being offered to the public:
- Community events such as parades
- Public meetings
- Wedding videography
- YIMS conducted videoconference documentation fee for a recent meeting of the Southern Partners Fund (youth earned $300 each.)
- Creative 30-second commercials
Now people from other communities are calling YIMS and asking them to demonstrate their work. This is inspiring other youth programs from around the state of Mississippi to do video documentation in their communities (YIMS is scheduled to make a presentation to other youth groups from Holmes/Tunica/Marion/Washington Counties.) The work of the Video Program is on display at local public libraries, at the YIMS facility and at the regular viewings hosted by YIMS at its demonstrations around the county and the state of Mississippi. YIMS video documentaries may soon be available for viewing on Mississippi public television, as well.
Partnerships
Pharoah North - one of the workshop facilitators - served a particularly instrumental role in helping to build YIMS' capacity to carry out the Video Documentary project. He connected YIMS to a woman who was closing out her video business in Denver, Colorado, where he lives. Because she understood and believed in what the youth were doing, she sold some $100,000 of cameras, video, sound editing, and computer equipment to YIMS for just $10,000 - the amount of the technology grant. YIMS uses this equipment, along with other equipment purchased with funding from other sources, in a video-editing lab within its Center. (Yet another success story: The YIMS center was an abandoned house that was purchased by the Whites' and adapted for use as an office and multipurpose center using community contributed labor and materials over a period of nine months. After it was cleaned up, the youth hosted a catered dinner there for the community.)
The YIMS stand-alone program has now expanded to include the Duck Hill School System (two days a week) and the Winona system (to begin in the Fall, one day a week.) This is especially significant because when the program grants were announced, the Duck Hill school system called the Kellogg Foundation and asked the Foundation to suspend the grant to YIMS and give it to them instead. They also called facilitators and asked them not to come and deliver the training. Nowadays, the Duck Hill, Kilmichael, Winona and Montgomery County school systems can be counted as programmatic partners. YIMS also works with Southern Echo on the New Voices project, the nationally-renown Algebra Project, The Highlander Center, Youth Action in New Mexico and the University of Michigan's School of Social Work.
The program is in expansion mode. Participants are actively recruiting other youth to train as replacements for their current jobs and responsibilities. The program graduated its first participants last year. Graduate Ronnie Everett is now based in Italy with the US Army and is engaged in technical career training. He will attend college.
YIMS now has a computer lab where an intergenerational computer skills training program with children and adults is held. A teacher from the Duck Hill school system teaches this class to some 20 participants:
8 youth and 12 adults.
YIMS has also recently received a grant from The Progressive Technology Project, www.progressivetech.org.
|
|
