‘Beyond the Numbers’ a documentary film project

Opportunity for youth with University of Minnesota students:

How are students interacting with ‘the numbers’ in their classrooms and schools?
What happens when ‘the numbers’ drive our education?

The Youth Education Justice Initiative (YEJI) is creating a short documentary film exploring the violence that occurs when students are reduced to numbers in their classrooms and schools. This project is being funded by the Summer 612 youth violence prevention campaign. We are working with youth to capture the stories that get silenced by “the numbers” in our education system: test scores, GPA, class rank, application fees, account numbers, student ID tags, graduation rates, school assessments, neighborhood demographics, etc.

This film is being produced collaboratively by students and a community filmmaker. The project will build the skills of youth to create their own media. Numbers do not have voices-Youth Do! Film is a medium through which youth can project those voices to a broad audience and become participants in the dialogues around education from which they are often excluded.

We have worked closely with youth from the Minneapolis Youth Congress and the Whose University? Campaign at the University of Minnesota to develop the vision for the film. These young people are at differing points in their experience in the education system- some are in high school, some have graduated, some are pursuing post secondary education. We are currently looking for a few more youth who are excited about exploring these issues and being a part of a collaborative film project to join the process. If you, or youth you are connected to, are interested in being a part of this project please contact YEJI ---Hana Worku and/or Jake Virden-----by
the end of this week, Friday, July 15th. The summer is moving quickly and so is this film!

Participants are committing to attend regular Saturday meetings and filming sessions that will be scheduled by the group and dependent on the availability of interviewees.

This work will be engaging and fast paced!
Hana Worku- haworku@gmail.com
Jake Worku- jakevirden@gmail.com