Media Education and Empowerment Program
Summer 2001

In the summer of 2001, TecsChange former Executive Director Mimi Jones coordinated and ran a successful Media Education and Empowerment Program. The goals of the program were two-fold:

• To teach the young participants to critically analyze, deconstruct, and decode media messages and images in order to examine how media (electronic and print) affect their lives, their values, and their communities
• To give them the knowledge and technical skills to create, produce and distribute their own media, using technologies such as the Internet and desktop publishing

The program enrolled several young people from Boston area high schools. They focused on examining primarily advertising media, viewing numerous documentaries aimed at helping youth critically analyze media aimed toward them. At the end of the summer the students helped publish Media Wise, a newsletter that summarized their experience while giving them hands-on experience in media production.

For more information about the Media Education and Empowerment Program, see the article entitled Teaching Skills, Inspiring Activism that appeared in the spring 2002 issue of the journal Radical Teacher.