Youth ROOTS, or Youth Reaching deep to Overcome Oppression by planting Transformative Seeds of change in the community, grows from 6 Core Beliefs and Commitments:
1. Build Respect;
2. Build Community;
3. Build Culture Capital;
4. Evolve Knowledge;
5. Build Transformative Intellectual Leaders; and
6. Transform Society.
This unique high school critical media and leadership program focuses on developing the agency, culture capital, and social capital with the youth of Oakland so that they could contribute to positively affecting the context of their own communities. Underneath a foundation of Critical Sociology, Taoism, and Hip Hop, a Youth ROOT gets equipped with weapons of the 21st century to act & interact as public transformative intellectuals, artists, organizers, & multi-media communicators who have a sustainable positive impact. They develop 4 personas to round out themselves as effective communicators: Word Warriors, Just Journalists, Cyba Souljas, Image Infiltratas.
From these personas, each Youth ROOT develops their agency by learning and getting authentic practice to use concrete skills in Spoken Word Poetry, Emceeing, Music Production, Graphic Design, Digital Photography, Digital Video, Digital Journalism (via Podcasting and Digital Storytelling), and Event Production.
Our talented crew of just over 20 Oakland youth have represented 7 different high schools: Oakland School for the Arts, Oakland Tech, Skyline, Life Academy, Oasis, American Indian Charter School, & Lighthouse Community Charter High School.
A Photograph Goes Here: Define VIA the CSS only!
"Either we’re gonna tell our own history or our oppressors will make a history for us."Assata Shakur
Look for Youth ROOTS on MySpace:
www.myspace.com/youthrootscrew
For more information about our programs...
phone: (510) 533-5989
fax: (510) 533-8825
or email us here...
Love is an Action