Dakar Foundation was invited to present at the 2016 LA Hi-Tech Summit, that took place at LAVC. Our task was to engage the students in a conversation about Health, and to discuss their experiences with the topic in greater detail for application to produce a public service announcement.
All topics, Health, Violence, Poverty, Youth Empowerment, Discrimination, Women’s rights and environment will be showcased at a culminating event, Sunday, July 31 that will feature screenings of the PSA categories as well as a good old fashioned potluck.
Thursday, The Cleveland High TIME students produced an event at L.A. Valley College – the L.A. Summit – in conjunction with the 11th International Youth Media Summit in Belgrade, Serbia. The event was part film training, part social activism, part international harmonizing. We kicked off the event with a screening of the short film below, Making Waves.
The L.A. Summit, held at L.A. Valley College auditorium brought together students, mentors, and leaders from southern California community based organizations to produce seven creative and effective public service announcements about pressing social issues.
The projected outcome will be showcased as collaborative PSA’s that will be shared with students as far away as Pakistan, as well as a movie that will document the processes and shared experience for all global participants.
The speakers were assigned a topic that ranged from Youth empowerment to discrimination. The goal was to connect the professionals in film and television industries to work collaboratively with students on producing short films or PSA’s.
Tanya Du’shay,Rap Pages gave a spirited presentation on her organization and her personal journey from modeling to becoming a power broker in Hollywood. Her topic was poverty, and her breakout session is sure to be as compelling as her introduction, we cant wait to see the PSA that comes from her students experience in the classroom.
The speakers were very diverse as they ranged from activist who work with street gangs in media to Los Angeles Police department and Los Angeles County Sheriff officers talking about their point of views on Black Lives Matter, and 360 view of Violence and media.
Marquita Thomas and Dan Watanabe had a moment where they shared with the students the power of networking and activism. They both worked at Freemantlle Media, a leader in television distribution, and gave example of how shared experiences have come full circle.
Dakar’s breakout session focused on the topic of health, and was led by Rochelle Jefferson-Carey a skilled child-development consultant contracted to provide public relation services to LAUSD, Arts & Branch and Dakar’s Media Academy.
The session featured a retired Army Air-corps flight nurse,Bettye who talked about her forty years in the military as a health provider and college instructor in nursing.
The Health breakout session ended with the screening of promotional trailer for the award-winning Documentary, For Love Of Liberty. The tie-in for this session was Dakar’s testimony about topics and stories that resonated with us as storytellers, and an illustration of the success and struggle to bring passion projects to the screen.
We hope our students made the connection between authenticity and passion in their storytelling. We enjoyed the experience and we sincerely thank the organizers for inviting us to participate in this years 2016 LA High Tech Media Summit.
