New Voices for Youth
Our speaker on Friday will be Jose ‘Lalo’ Saavedra Lara, the Project Director and instructor for the New Voices for Youth program at the Boys and Girls Club in East Palo Alto and the Siena Youth Center in Redwood City. He will describe various aspects of the program whose mission is to provide students with media production training in order to create their own original documentaries on issues of importance to them. The underlying belief is that when youth experience the power of making a difference through media arts, they are more likely to get politically involved. If this sounds familiar to some, it should. We have heard from New Voices before. They have been so compelling that our PAUR Community Service committee funded NV4Y with a well-deserved $1000 DDF grant. It will be gratifying for NV4Y to showcase the funded program.
New Voices for Youth is a course for Middle School students designed to encourage civic engagement through the media arts. With the assistance of the League of Women Voters and community mentors, students learn how to write, direct, edit and screen digital movies about an issue in their community. Students work in teams and mentors help them learn how to identify an issue, research its roots, identify reliable sources for facts and figures, create a digital film to tell a story, and exhibit a film online and promote it utilizing social media.
Through their participation in the New Voices For Youth Program, students develop many lifelong skills, such as, public speaking, interviewing, grassroots activism, team building, research, non-linear editing and writing, movie development and production.
Jose Saavedra Lara (“Lalo”) is a recent graduate from Cogswell College, with a BA in Digital Media Management, who spent his youth at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula and later as their music program director. Growing up in a low-income home, his number one goal was to break the ongoing poverty cycle in his predominantly Latino community. At a very young age, Lalo's experiences ignited his passion for music. As the years passed, his endeavors led him to use music as a means of spreading community awareness about local and global issues. Lalo also developed skills in film production within Adobe's non-profit media program, Adobe Youth Voices. Through his involvement with the organization, he learned the importance of guiding youth, teaching them to voice themselves as individuals, and as a community through media.
At 23, Lalo plans to produce high-quality media for the best in the entertainment industry. He will continue to support his community, especially youth development through media and mentorship.
"My ultimate goal is to properly equip the youth in local communities with enhanced skills so they hold a competitive advantage within their desired career field; thus, showing them how to break the 'glass ceiling' that constrains young, talented media makers."