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In June 2006, WKCD joined other U.S.-based youth media organizations in a multi-year international initiative called Adobe Youth Voices, sponsored by Adobe Systems Incorporated. This year, the initiative’s second year, WKCD is working exclusively with youth and educators outside the U.S—in Beijing, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. The first year, WKCD teamed with students and teachers in New York City, San Francisco and San Jose, Seattle, London, Delhi, and Bangalore.
In January 2008, the work will truly take off. Below, though, you will find the first multi-media posts from youth in Romania and Hungary.
Romania
In Romania, we have teamed up with Resource Center for Roma Communities in Cluj Napoca, Romania. The United Nations has declared this first decade of the 21st century “The Decade of Roma Inclusion,” looking to diminish the discrimination and cultural conflict that has kept the Roma population in Romania and across Europe on the margins of society. Our work in Cluj, the urban center of Transylvania, supports a growing group of Roma (gypsy) youth in documenting their city and its culture through online short, audio slideshows. In the spring, we will work together on a photo essay book that underscores the diversity within the Roma community.
This September, WKCD spent several days with our Roma youth voices team in Cluj, took our digital cameras for a test drive, and came up with three audio slideshows for the project’s debut.
cine suntem (who we are) | stiluri de viata (lifestyles) | creator (creative)
Hungary
In Hungary, we are partnering with the Foundation for Democratic Youth, headquartered in Budapest. Youth from five service-learning projects across Hungary will document their community work through photographs and interviews, or in the case of one project, their video production/television activities. In April 2008, in connection with World Service Learning Day, WKCD will spend two weeks in Hungary working with youth in these five projects to create a nationwide publication highlighting their community activities.
As a prelude to this work, we’ve created a small portfolio of photographs students took as part of their clean up one of Budapest’s most popular—and littered—public parks. There was a photo contest connected to the clean up, and these were the winning photographs.
Beijing
In Beijing, we will be working with a team of six students, from various high schools, to create a biweekly blog that features audio clips, photographs, and commentary created from each student, along with found video that the students find especially interesting. The students’ blogs will focus on a different topic each time, and they will be posted in Chinese on China’s premiere blog site, sina.com, as well as in English on vox.com.
A second project will build upon work WKCD has already done with students at one of Beijing’s “key” schools, leading to a photo essay book that captures the changing face of China through the perspective of its youth. Our work in Beijing will kick off in January 2008 and run through July 2008, just as the Beijing 2008 Olympics take the world stage.
Czech Republic
Here, WKCD will engage a group of young journalists and photographers in Prague to create a series of “voice threads” and audio slideshows that capture issues important to youth in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe.
