Activists:
10 in the age group of 12-15 years
Facilitators:
This
was the first YAN project to be carried out in any youth technology
center since the inception of YAN in 2002. The Arts Director
of the Charlestown Computer Clubhouse already had a grant
to develop a project about peace, so it was decided to benefit
from that and the creation and distribution of bumper stickers
about peace in Charlestown was proposed as the project, to
the first YAN members.
There were 11 weekly sessions, each 2 hours long.
1st Session:
The goals of the project were
briefly introduced and the members were asked to list down
the name of the places that they considered peaceful and non-peaceful
of Charlestown. Then, organized in groups, they took the mentors
in a guided tour around the places marked and used the Clubhouse
cameras to register everything.
2nd Session:The
pictures were printed and used to foster a discussion about
what was it that made some places more peaceful than others.
It was interesting to realize that sometimes a single place
may be considered peaceful by some and non-peaceful by others.
Issues of war and religion had also been raised. At the end,
young participants were very happy for the opportunity to
express their opinions and find out more about what the others
thought.
In the next
six sessions, the young activists discussed the kinds of peace
messages they would like to pass to the community, designed
different kinds of bumper stickers on paper, digitized their
work, discussed ways of distributing the bumper stickers around
and drafted a letter describing the ideas behind their work.
Of those sessions, two of them were marked by extraordinary
activities. In one of them, YAN members from Charlestown participated
in an Internet chat session with YAN members from the Palacio
Postal Clubhouse (Mexico City). Since both Clubhouses are
located in historical neighborhoods that are now suffering
a series of social issues. The participants of both sides
had a fun and enriching time trying to communicate in a mixture
of English and Spanish and find out more about what each group
was doing. It was also interesting to see how youth customized
the chat tool in order to maintain a differentiated identity
online.
9th Session:
All the participants and facilitators went out to watch a
local baseball game with some free tickets received from the
Boys and Girls Club. It was a great opportunity to interact
and enjoy the company of the other project participants in
a different context.
10th Session:
Finally, while the bumper stickers were out being printed
in a specialized shop, the group started working on the documentary
production.A student from the MIT Media Lab volunteered to
carry a one-session documentary-making workshop with the youth.
During that session, she showed examples, had the participants
present their ideas, and taught them the basics of the video
editing software that they had available at the Clubhouse.
11th Session:The
facilitators kept working on the script definition and the
members started collecting images and songs for the documentary
from the web and a simple website that was created by a facilitator
with the pictures taken in the previous sessions. The initial
documentary ideas ranged from contrasting scenes of peace
and war, shots of Charlestown, rap songs about life in community,
and the showcase of the young activists doing their work.
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An activist holding the bumper
sticker created by her