Mississippi Youth Media Project
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About the Mississippi Youth Media Project

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​The Mississippi Youth Media Project trains primarily underserved teenagers, ages 14 to 18, using digital technology to produce equitable, high-quality multimedia projects to share their own stories and report on their communities with rigorous solutions journalism. Through creative community engagement, students construct narratives that shift the perceptions of young people, actively creating new possibilities for upcoming generations of young Mississippians. Key goals of YMP are to reduce school dropouts, inspire more first-generation college students, and bridge the workforce skills gap by preparing teenagers for an evolving work environment with 21st-century jobs. YMP enhances the creativity of young people and connects with students through innovative school partnerships, after-school education programs, and an intensive summer newsroom laboratory.
​YMP is a project of Jackson 2000 Inc.
View, read and listen to YMP student journalism at jxnpulse.com.
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How to reach the YMP.

Call us:  601.966.0834 or 601.499.5924
Email us: [email protected]
Write to us: 125 S. Congress St., Suite 1330, Jackson, MS, 39201.
Tweet us: @msyouthmedia 
Facebook: Mississippi Youth Media Project
Instagram: @msyouthmediaproject

Donate to us here.
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The YMP's origin story: The seeds went into the ground for the Mississippi Youth Media Project almost a decade ago after Jackson Free Press co-founder and editor-in-chief Donna Ladd spoke to a group of Jim Hill High School students and teachers at the Jackson Zoo about the unfair and incomplete way that most mainstream media cover young people, especially young people of color. After telling them about a youth project in the Bronx in New York City in which young people examined how The New York Times covered young people, the group started meeting in the Jackson Free Press offices to brainstorm on how to teach media literacy in Mississippi and, ultimately, help young people learn to "be the media" in the state to positively affect the public narrative about their own lives.

Over the years, what was called "YMP" took a variety of forms. One summer, a diverse group of young people examined local media coverage and producing a special issue of the Jackson Free Press. In other summers, high-school students came together to learn media skills and publish a blog, engage with mentors and speakers, study professional and soft skills, and have many in-depth discussions in the JFP offices.

In June 2016, YMP grew up into something bigger and separate from the Jackson Free Press in the first full-time summer intensive project with its own inspiring newsroom in the old Associated Press offices. Then a W.K. Kellogg Leadership fellow, Donna Ladd joined with four other fellows to introduce the new YMP as their leadership project, with a diverse team of teachers, trainers and mentors. The project offered writing, video, podcasting, photography, web design, soft skills, and entrepreneurial media training and mentoring. The YMP "school" included a variety of workshops and speakers in those areas with the goals of teaching standards that help the teens in their academic success, while giving teens the experience of participating in the startup atmosphere of a student media project and eventual launch of their own web publication, which the students named jxnpulse.com.

In Spring 2017, YMP piloted its first school partnership program with the Wingfield High School (WHS) Fine Arts, Athletics, Mathematics and Engineering, or FAME, program, an initiative that provides an alternative to the traditional school day for students who have discipline issues or are behind on credits. The FAME program aims to prevent school dropout—approximately one-third (76 students) of the 226 students who dropped out of JPS in 2008-2009 were from WHS. To combat high dropout rates at WHS, YMP served around 15 FAME students from 9th through 12th grades each week to learn career technical skills with a focus on technology innovation and multimedia skill development. In the first three months of the program, WHS students published completed photojournalism packages online at the jxnpulse.com site. Three of the students also helped organize Jackson’s first Youth Mayoral Forum, with two in the media panel on-stage interviewing candidates.

A number of YMP students, like those from Wingfield High School, are young people living in poverty at the highest risk of committing crime, which many have witnessed from a young age. Students use media tools to connect with peers, adults, and their communities through constructive dialogue, collaboration, and navigating differences, biases, and conflicts to build strong relationships in a safe environment of empathy and forgiveness. YMP uses real stories to change the larger media and public narrative, and thus policies, that affect young people in Mississippi, and YMP promotes race dialogue, teaches equity principles and historic truths, and fosters positive relationships in an open, safe environment. YMP training is free to students and families. 


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Youth Media Project Founder

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Donna Ladd
YMP founder Donna Ladd is a journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Miss. In 2002 she helped launch the Jackson Free Press and later BOOM Jackson magazine. Ladd has won numerous national writing and reporting awards, including for leading a diverse team of young Mississippi journalists to help her investigate the 1964 Henry Dee-Charles Moore murders alongside the CBC, ultimately bringing James Ford Seale to justice. Ladd received a B.A. in political science from Mississippi State University in 1983. In the mid-career program at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1999, she developed a social-justice focus for her studies in the Columbia Law School, Teacher's College and the Institute for African American Studies, in addition to the journalism school. In 2014, she became a three-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Fellow focusing on improving the media narrative about young people of color in the state and the U.S., culminating in the launch of the Mississippi Youth Media Project in summer 2016. She was also a Packard Future of Children Fellow, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice Fellow and received two Solutions Journalism Network grants to develop an award-winning “Preventing Violence” series of in-depth stories about young people and violence.

Major Sponsors and Supporters of YMP

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Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) is a leader in informational broadcasting. MPB has exhibited a commitment to educating and informing Mississippians. MPB has partnered with YMP to lend tech equipment and provide youth engagement and media specialists to train students. 
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E3, a project of Parents of Public Schools of Jackson (now Ask for More), supported YMP in summers 2016 and 2017 with stipends for students, and other  resources.
The Community Foundation of Greater Jackson (now The Community Foundation of Mississippi) is the
​fiscal sponsor for E3.
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Podastery Studios in downtown Jackson offers a network of locally produced podcasts. Beau York, founder of Podastery, has generously donated his time to train YMP students in podcasting skills and allowed Youth Media Project students to borrow professional podcasting equipment to learn
​production skills.
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Dialogue Jackson, formerly Jackson 2000 Inc., is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to fostering understanding and building harmony between people of different races, ethnicities and backgrounds. The group became YMP's fiscal sponsor in 2017 and hosts youth dialogues for teens.. 

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Choice Printing in downtown Jackson is an in-kind sponsor of YMP offering YMP copying and printing services from its Capitol Towers location.

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Good Design & Code >>

Good Design & Co offers high-end UI/UX, web development, app development and branding services. Principal J.C. Hiatt is helping YMP students publish their own website for stories, video, podcasts and more.
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Jackson-based Workplace Solutions by Barefield is a Steelcase authorized dealer offering high-end office furniture and technology solutions. Workplace Solutions has loaned chairs, mobile desks and mobile whiteboards to create a collaborative office for YMP participants.

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Jackson-based Fuse.cloud (formerly Broadband Voice) offers Voice-over-IP phone systems, fiber Internet connections and technical services. Fuse.cloud has sponsored phones, VoIP phone service and technical assistance for YMP.

SPECIAL THANKS TO DR. GEORGE SCHIMMEL and NATALIE IRBY FOR THEIR GENEROUS DONATIONS OF PRODUCTION IMACS FOR THE YOUTH MEDIA PROJECT.
CLICK HERE TO MAKE YOUR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO YMP.
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