A new three-year, $475,000 grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation will expand the University of Montana School of Journalism’s Youth Voices project, bolstering its capacity to teach young people journalism skills that enable career success.
The award will increase the number of Youth Voices program partners, provide new professional credentials and improve opportunities for high school students in rural and Indigenous communities throughout Montana to create journalism. The grant also supports a series of trainings that will enable high school teachers to implement the program within their own schools. A new advisory board will ensure the program meets community needs.
Youth Voices began as an initiative to engage young people by teaching them to produce audio reporting about their communities. These projects, created in either semester-long classes in high schools or more intensive week-long summer camps, often air on public radio or in professionally produced podcasts.
“The secret to Youth Voices has always been to start with an engaging and creative project,” said Mary Auld, Montana Media Lab director. “It has always been about empowering young people to tell their communities’ stories in their own voices.”
Past Youth Voices projects have included Greenough students reporting the impacts of a bridge closure in their neighborhood, Poplar students documenting an annual buffalo hunt, Heart Butte students documenting a solar project, and many more examples.
This project helps address Montana’s critical workforce development challenges by providing job expertise to high school students in rural and Indigenous communities. These programs provide teens with transferable skills and valuable experience that will propel them to success in any field they pursue.
Now, with funding from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s Youth Development portfolio, these projects will expand in number and offer students tangible professional credentials they can apply anywhere after the project.
“The program is still about sparking creativity and giving voice to people often excluded from the media,” said Auld, “but now it is also about showing them that the skills they learn as storytellers can provide pathways to many different jobs in Montana and beyond. This project will prepare young people to build meaningful careers.”
The grant funds the Montana Media Lab, housed within the UM School of Journalism. The Lab hires undergraduate and graduate journalism students to travel as part of a teaching and mentoring project. These students and professional instructors will partner with tribal and community colleges to produce educational trainings throughout the year.
As part of these new trainings, the Media Lab will develop various credentials – job readiness certificates and dual credit with college or university partners. The goal is to better articulate for future employers the skills the student has gained throughout the program.
“Journalism offers many practical skills that employers want – ability to work in a team, to research, to interview – and this expanded Youth Voice project will turn those activities into documented skills the student will take with them,” said Lee Banville, director of the UM School of Journalism.
About the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation:
The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is a philanthropy founded to help transform lives and communities by uniting people across differences to find common cause. Started in 1995 by Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot, the foundation has granted more than $1.5 billion to charitable causes. Our collective giving areas are Atlanta’s Westside, Democracy, Environment, Mental Health and Well-Being, and Youth Development. Across these areas, we take on tough challenges by uniting the courage and compassion of our communities so we can all thrive together. In addition to the priority areas of giving, the foundation oversees a large portfolio of grants including support of essential Atlanta nonprofit institutions, such as Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Shepherd Center, and enduring founder-led initiatives, such as veterans and the military and stuttering, among others. The foundation will also continue to guide the six associate-led giving committees operating across the Blank Family of Businesses. For more information, please visit www.blankfoundation.org.
By: UM News Service
