Bright colors, long hard-hitting strokes and inspiration from an object can be found on many walls of Fresno’s Tower and Mural Districts. One of those murals is my favorite. It is of a woman surrounded by musical instruments as if she is pouring herself into the sounds of the instruments with captivating eyes. The viewer can only wonder what emotion the painter had in creating the art.
Author: The kNOw Youth Media
The kNOw works to support and equip young people with the journalism and advocacy skills they need to tell their stories and the stories of their communities.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
In the summer of 2011 I was pulled over at 11 p.m., but why? Did I run a stop sign and crash into another car? Or was it because I ran a red light? Apparently, the CHP that night wasn’t able to see my license plate so he pulled me over.
For pretty much all my life I wondered why I had so many different doctors. I’m not sure how many doctors I had, but I remember when I was younger I went to San Francisco for doctor visits twice a year. When I was 13 years old, it was at one of these visits that I found out I have HIV. They told me that when I was born, my mother, who also has the virus, passed it on to me.
As California’s fourth largest school district, Fresno Unified has recently begun revamped efforts to address its high number of school dropouts. The district is using approaches that involve listening to different individuals in the community, including experts in education-related fields and students. Several ideas have been suggested as to the cause of the high dropout rate.
Growing up you always hear the phrase, “The world works in mysterious ways.” I saw the truth of this saying when I attended the Boys & Men of Color (BMoC) Summer Enrichment Camp. For many years I’ve battled a negative mindset. My motivating experience at the BMoC camp changed my mindset completely from what it was when I arrived.