The Reach All Youth blog was created to voice the concerns of thousands of educators and youth workers who want to address issues affecting the development of America’s youth.
We welcome your thoughts.
The Reach All Youth blog was created to voice the concerns of thousands of educators and youth workers who want to address issues affecting the development of America’s youth.
We welcome your thoughts.
February 16, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Dear Ed,
My name is Laris. I wanted to share a website we’re working on to see if you would be interested in writing a post about it on your blog. The site is called howwewill.org and it documents the development of a production of Shakespeare’s 12th Night, but it’s not your normal Shakespeare. This is a hip hop version, the catch of this actual performance is the theater company is doing the play as a hip-hop version, but unlike other hip-hop Shakespeare the performers are keeping the text as is.
We thought it fit in with the content you post about on your Reach All Youth site. During the production we conducted a lot of community engagement, a large part was focussed on the younger community members. Especially those that had limited, or no arts programming in their schools.
The website (howwewill.org) itself tracks the development of the performance, including the community interaction with the process.
Drop me a line if you have any questions.
Sincerely, Laris (917) 446-3087 – laris@limeprojects.com
May 1, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I have a concern about the emphasis on infrastructure and green jobs. Ed often talks about the exclusion of African-American and Latino youth from good jobs in the labor market. There is another group that is also excluded and merits attention. According to the Department of Labor Womens Bureau less than 5%! of the jobs in the skilled blue collar trades are being done by women. Women only make up 2.6% of electrians, 1.9% of carpenters and 3.7% of construction workers according to the book 250 Best Jobs Through Apprenticeships. No one seems to have data on what percentage of these women are people of color but you know it must be very low. Youth employment programs that don’t learn how to do non-tradtional employment programming will only be contributing inadvertently to the good old boys network. Programs need to study models like Chicago Women in the Trades, the Rosie the Riveter Charter High School in Longbeach (the first high school in the world to focus on helping young women get careers in the skilled trades) and other successful non-traditional employment programs. Find tradeswomen and bring them into program as role models. Get their input about how to recruit, train and retain young women in these very good careers. See if any of your local youth or adult training programs and union apprenticeship programs are focusing on young women. Learn from what they are doing. Subscribe to the free newsletter Pride and A Paycheck (tradesis@aol.com)that is a non-traditional employment recruiting tool edited by my wife who was a tradeswoman for 13 years. Without rethinking the sexist and color line bias that exists in so many good paying jobs even the best youth employment programs will be inadvertently replicating the sexism and racism that dominates these occupations. Break this cycle by making non-traditional employment a major part of your green jobs and infrastructure rebuilding efforts.