The power of media to educate, it is in YAMI U’s hands…

YAMI University is a week and a half away. With seven business days to go, we at Cable Positive are feverishly crossing our t’s and dotting our i's as we prepare for what we hope will be an amazing educational and personal experience. With 17 youth participating, varying in ages from 16-23, from all different parts of the Northeast, and all different walks of life, this will going to be an interesting 8 days, to say the least!

The youth coming to YAMI U (generously funded through a Motorola Foundation grant) have varying degrees of experience with media; Metro TeenAIDS youth come with some text messaging knowledge, APICHA (Asian Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS) youth come with strong HIV/AIDS presentation skills, while TeenAIDS Peer Corp and T.I.P.P (Teen Impact Prevention Program) both have youth with experience in script writing and PSA/webcast development and implementation. This talented group of youth, through their participation in YAMI U, will expand their knowledge and skills in order to develop an HIV/AIDS prevention multi-media campaign that is truly for youth, by youth. This week’s YAMI U participating organization highlight will focus on T.I.P.P, located in Jamaica, New York.

Funded by Cable Positive’s Tony Cox Community Fund grant in 2006, T.I.P.P. produced the Public education campaign, “Why?” By focusing on youth exclaiming, Why? before stating an HIV/AIDS youth fact, T.I.P.P. allowed the youth to take ownership of statistics and funnel that focus to educate an urban demographic of youth. Their PSA won the “What’s Your Angle? Teens Take on HIV/AIDS” competition (co-sponsored by Cable Positive and NetAID), which allowed them to reshoot Why? with Kismet Films, in a studio setting, allowing the focus to become broadly based to encompass youth at large.

The original Why? public education campaign was aired on Time Warner in addition to being viewed on YouTube and MySpace. T.I.P.P received an interesting mix of feedback due to the airing of their PSA; T.I.P.P. received an influx of new volunteers (who eventually became peer educators), many community based organizations asked for copies of Why? to use as a discussion point for their youth groups, and were awarded a grant to participate in a city council pilot peer education program. I know, what a great community reaction to a public education campaign, right???

T.I.P.P. utilized different media outlets to gain different audiences in order to spread a vital call to action. Don’t you want to see what these young people will accomplish while they are participants in YAMI U, I know that I cannot wait to see!! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, stay tuned to this blog, and comment on photos and video as you become a virtual participant of YAMI U; we are excited to have you join us a virtual YAMI U participant!!