DML day 2 -session 1 - UC Davis Healthy Youth, Healthy Regions program

Attended first session of the day: a presentation of UC Davis’ Healthy Youth, Healthy Regions program– http://artofregionalchange.ucdavis.edu/hyhr/ the presenters were showcasing what they describe as a new model – a participatory research study including youth media

The team presented 3 youth led media projects

The focus of all 3 projects was building social media capital with marginalized youth

Describes UC Davis research team – it is actually 3 teams:

1. qualitative team – collecting stories

2. quantitative team

3. Participatory action team – the team that engages young people in media projects – 3 teams within this section - W Sacramento youth voices for change, Reach youth media working in 4 communities, Youth in Focus – in 2 communities Oakland, Sacramento

1. Sacramento project: youth voices for change – young people used photographs and flip video for reflection on what aspects of their neighborhood they wanted to change then embedded their media into google maps – as an add on advocacy event they put on a community forum with Mayor/legislators – e.g. created a comic book policy brief . The team also created an action planning curriculum.

2. Reach youth media project http://reachyouthprogram.org/youth_media – worked with 4 communities – Woodlawn sex ed video probably most celebrated of the projects – one of most interesting parts of the program was the follow up activities including the media pack/action cards

3. Youth in Focus http://www.youthinfocus.net/ an intermediary nonprofit that promotes youth led action research – worked with youth groups in 2 areas to help them define their research question, to collect data, engage in data analysis and then develop n action plan for change.

Youth REP is a book they have produced that explains their methodology http://www.youthinfocus.net/resources_publications_2.htm

One of the most interesting things about the project was the development of a matrix including all the films created by all the young people in all of the geographic locations that participated in the program, researchers created a searchable database – used invivo software to create this – what this now means is that researchers have a serchable archive of photographs, data, written material and video.