On Oct. 8, City Councilmember Brandon Vang presented The kNOw’s youth journalists and their adult allies with a proclamation recognizing The kNOw Youth Media’s 20th anniversary. For 20 years, Youth Leadership Institute’s (yli) youth-led media program has empowered young people to make their voice heard, share their perspectives and advocate for change within the Central Valley.
The kNOw began in 2006 as an after-school writing workshop where students came together to learn the essentials of media creation and storytelling. Over time, the program evolved into The kNOw we know today: a program that merges youth development with journalism, storytelling and communication skills into a platform for young voices.
“We had very humble beginnings. When we first started The kNOw, we actually didn’t even have an office. We were meeting in the parking lot, and I was there with my little clipboard and like 15 young people seated on the floor figuring out what we were gonna try to accomplish for our first issue,” shared The kNOw’s co-founder, Mai Der Vang, an award-winning poet and current assistant professor of English at Fresno State.
Vang shared that she has enjoyed watching The kNOw bloom into the program that it is today and that it is everything that she hoped the program would be. Vang emphasized that the work The kNOw does is important in the mission to better support young people.
“Young people are going to help shape the future generations of our world and of our society and our communities, and we have to do our part now to bring them to a place where they feel supported, guided and that they have the ability to dream a better world for all of us,” she said.
Johnsen Del Rosario, the senior program manager for The kNOw, shared that the goal for the program has been the same since Vang and her peers created it.
“The goal is to give young people a voice in order to tell their stories and the stories of their communities [and] about issues that they’re seeing in their communities through a social justice and community health lens,” he said.
Del Rosario first became acquainted with The kNOw as a youth reporter looking to get involved in his community. Now, as an adult ally, he helps young people use their voice, develop political agency and see Fresno in a new light.
Zofia Trexler, an alum of The kNOw Youth Media, shared that their experience with the program was a pivotal moment of their life.
“It was a totally new experience for me for someone to tell me that my voice had value. For someone to be interested in what I thought and what I had to say,” they said. “It was like nobody even heard me. Like I would talk about my life and sometimes it was like speaking to a wall, like people’s eyes would glaze over and you knew that they weren’t understanding what you were saying. So to have a program where youth voice was so emphasized was really, really transformational for me,” they said.
From transferring to Stanford to applying for jobs, Trexler emphasized that The kNOw gave them the confidence to see these opportunities as attainable.
Trexler is only one of the many young people who have found meaningful growth and community in The kNOw. Current youth journalist, Valeria Sanchez, shared that her experience at The kNOw has been both professionally and personally impactful.
“The opportunities I’ve received through this program have allowed me to grow as a writer, advocate and leader. It has shown me that everyone’s story matters and that young people have the power to create meaningful change when they are given the opportunity,” Sanchez said.
Since joining The kNOw, Sanchez has published her work, participated in civic engagement and will perform as a finalist in the Fresno Youth Poet Laureate Contest on Nov. 18 at Breakbox Thought Collective.
Moving into its 20th year, The kNOw plans to continue its mission of mentorship and platforming youth voices with redeveloped curriculum shaped around each cohort’s interests as well as career-applicable technical skills.
“I really want to continue to build on the mentorship within The kNOw and with practical options for youth participants in and out of programming. It would be great to continue to connect the youth with professional journalists in the Central Valley who had similar upbringings and origins to them to see how their dreams can take shape in real life,” shared Ashley Flowers, the senior program coordinator for The kNOw.
Flowers emphasized that involving youth in navigating the direction of the program, connecting them with journalists and communications professionals in the community and giving youth the tools and platform to express the issues they face has given youth a new sense of ownership over The kNOw. With a strong, community-rooted foundation and knowledgeable curriculum that shifts with the times, The kNOw continues to ensure that the future of youth journalism is bright.
If you would like to support The kNOw in amplifying youth voices and building informed communities, please consider reading, sharing and making a donation to support the development and compensation of youth reporters. Read more from The kNOw at theknowfresno.org and connect with Flowers at [email protected] to learn about more opportunities to support the program.
