HARKEN! Youth Media / Workforce Training Archive
The purpose of HARKEN! Youth Media was to nurture critical thinking, creativity, and 21st Century skills while teaching documentary filmmaking.
Social & Life Skill Development
In 2002 in East Los Angeles, an environment where 50% of Latino students did not graduate from high school, Harken Productions saw the possibility of using Dramatic Improvisation and Documentary Filmmaking to empower gang-affiliated and frustrated youth.
We took a media literacy approach with the content of our productions. Media literacy is a set of competencies that empowers citizens to access, retrieve, understand, evaluate, use, create, and share information and media content in all formats. (The Center for Media and Information Literacy)
In learning these skill sets, students also developed strong social and life skills such as organizational abilities, leadership, team participation, commitment, accountability.
Four students at the MET School were trained in all aspects of video production and took on the task of making an orientation video for incoming freshman to the school.
"…Our population of students face many struggles in their lives and communities from poverty to gang violence. Michelle has enabled our students to address these struggles giving them voice through filmmaking. Michelle's compassion matched with technical and creative abilities has enabled our students to grow in innumerable ways socially, technically, and critically. Given the population we serve this has been an invaluable tool for their ongoing growth toward becoming contributing members of society."
Martin Bautista
Program Coordinator, SoledadEnrichment Action, Los Angeles, CA
Michelle ..."has brought a profound level of understanding of the economic, social, academic and emotional struggles that our students face to her work through filmmaking. Each video she has produced with our students has yielded a level of skill sets, critical thinking and media literacy that has exposed our youth to new options in further study and life."
Sr. Elisa Martinez
Co-Executive Director, Soledad Enrichment Action, Los Angeles, CA