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MillimeterDream Job: Beyond Borders
Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Kristinha M. Anding
Global Action Project bridges cultural divides with youth-centered media.
Youth producer Karina Hurtado shoots video on location in Caracas, Venezuela, as part of Global Action Project’s Global Voices initiative.
Diana Coryat wants to build a community not just in New York, where she resides, but also internationally. She co-founded the Global Action Project (GAP), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide young people with the tools, relationships, and skills they need to make powerful media about issues of concern to them. Beginning in 1991 with its first project, a “videoletter” shared between youth in Ghana and New York's public schools, Coryat and co-founder Susan Siegel saw this dream unfolding.
“Young people who hated documentaries, geography, and history loved listening to the words and seeing the images of people who were the same age from another place talking about issues that were really important to them,” Coryat says.
Since its launch, GAP has grown to accommodate a staff of 16 and more than 100 young “cultural producers,” who are primarily of high-school age and from underserved communities in New York. Working in small groups, GAP participants engage in collective brainstorming, research, shooting, and editing to create 10 to 15 video projects per year. The videomakers then present their finished pieces at an annual screening and at dozens of schools, festivals, and conferences, where they discuss with their audiences the impact of their work. GAP projects have also been broadcast on the Youth Channel of the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and Free Speech TV. The videos focus on social justice issues that affect young people locally and globally, from how immigrant youth cope with anti-immigrant hype in a post-9/11 world to the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York.
Through GAP's Global Voices initiative, youth producers have traveled all over the world, creating videos with their counterparts in Northern Ireland, Brazil, and Venezuela, among other countries. “We want for them to become conscious citizens of the world, not just citizens of a country,” Coryat says. “We want them to ask: How am I a global citizen, and what's my solidarity with other people in the world?”
GAP offers participants Sony DSR-PDX10 and DX-2000 cameras, as well as five editing stations equipped with Apple G4s and G5s running Apple Final Cut Pro 4.5 and DVD Studio Pro 3. Coryat prides the organization with bringing quality video-making tools to kids from under-resourced communities, but she says the real value of the program is the connections it fosters. “The program is about more than just access to media and media equipment,” she says. “It really provides a portal to the world.”
