Spend a day at the colorful VOX office and you will walk away impressed by the seriousness, imagination, creativity, and audacious energy of the teens in the program. They dream, and they dream big.
VOX Teen Communications is a non-profit youth development organization located in downtown Atlanta, GA, dedicated to “giving us teens the skills and resources to raise our voices about issues that most matter to us.” They publish a teen newspaper and maintain a web site. Some VOX teens are active in the Just Georgia project, an initiative to revise Georgia’s Juvenile Code related to youth living in foster care.
So, what issues did these teens voice when StoryCorps spent a day at VOX? They articulated dreams and hopes for their future, concerns about their peers, and what they think college life will be like. Of course there were pop culture references to music, television, and movies as well. The teens also chose to talk about more serious topics.
For example, Cassandra Maddox (15) and Teyonna Ridgeway (18) discussed body image and its effects on the age at which girls become sexually active. They came to their StoryCorps interview with pages of notes and questions for each other. After discussing how they work to maintain a positive image of themselves in spite of messages they might receive from media, Cassandra noted, “When a guy says you’re sexy, he’s looking at your body. If he tells you you’re pretty, he’s looking at your face. If he tells you you’re beautiful, he’s looking at your inside.”
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The Atlanta StoryCorps team conducted outreach recordings at WONDERroot, a community arts organization in Reynoldstown, an Atlanta neighborhood. Along with facilitator Lola Ibitoye, I had the pleasure of recording a few of the young people involved with WONDERroot and the Atlanta arts community.
A few weeks later, we were invited back to WONDERroot to participate in Raising All Youth Voices, a youth media night. The event was a collaboration between WONDERroot, VOX Teen Newspaper, Fuel Media, and StoryCorps. The event showcased the amazing work of teens in the Atlanta area. These phenomenal teens wowed the audience with a variety of talents which included a spicy salsa dance routine, sensational spoken word presentations, and a live band. VOX, the teen newspaper, had a very strong presence in the evening’s events and distributed their periodicals to all the guests.
Among the food, mingling, and fun, guests were encouraged to visit the many stations set up throughout the Center. One included television feeds that featured debates that many of the teens had recorded with local Atlanta television channels. Another station aired video footage the teens had produced and recorded themselves. StoryCorps set up a listening booth inside WONDERroot’s recording studio. The booth generated so much interest that many of the teens asked if they could volunteer with StoryCorps in the future!
The VOX teens took a special interest in our presence that evening and interviewed Lola and I about StoryCorps and our work with youth and the Atlanta community. Overall, the evening was a wonderful opportunity to witness the depth of these young peoples’ talents and the power of the teen voice.
