Milwaukee Youth STRIVE for excellence

By Frizell Bailey

There seems to be an awful lot of attention paid to the misdeeds of young people these days, from the tragic beating death in a Northwest Milwaukee neighborhood to the contentious Mayfair mall controversy. But there are plenty of teens in Milwaukee making positive contributions to their city and their communities.

The Strive Media Institute, located on Martin Luther King Drive in Milwaukee, is an after school program where teens get practical experience in just about every facet of the media. The non-profit institute was founded in 1990 by Matthew Johnson, a Milwaukee native who saw a need for an outlet that provided tools to youth to help them become strong members of the community.

Not your father’s ad agency.

Strive functions like an agency, with both external clients and internal projects. The program is divided into four different business units: film and video production, technology, print journalism, and integrated marketing communications.

What separates Strive Media from many other mentoring and training programs for teenagers is that the media products are conceived and produced by kids in the program. This is even more impressive when you consider that Strive’s weekly TV show, Gumbo Television, won an Emmy, and will air regularly on TMJ-4 beginning this fall. They also produce a glossy magazine, Gumbo, once every two months that enjoys statewide and national distribution. The kids have a presence in cyberspace with their Tecknow Solutions group, which designs websites and was featured on the front page of the Journal Sentinel’s Business Section.

Fighting youth smoking with FACT.

The Integrated Marketing Communications program is an agency with local and national clients, one of the most high profile being the FACT anti-smoking campaign. In addition to widely aired TV commercials written and produced entirely by Strivers (as they call themselves), the program targets youth smoking with events, undercover compliance checks and other guerilla tactics aimed at empowering teens to make their own choices about tobacco, and not succumb to Big Tobacco marketing. Anabel Navaro, Integrated Marketing Communications Supervisor, believes keeping control of the campaign in the hands of teens is critical. “FACT’s focus is to urge kids to be cognizant of their actions, to recognize that by smoking they’re actually putting money in some rich guy’s pocket who’s trying to kill them. And that’s what makes it cool. If you had adults working on a mission like this, you wouldn’t be getting the passion.”

The Institute receives compensation for FACT as part of the tobacco settlement. With the elimination of the Tobacco Control Board and the impending reduction of anti-tobacco program funding (which so far has decreased from $25 million in 2001 to $15 in 2003, and is slated for another $5 million reduction next year), Strive Associate Director Molly Collins is concerned, but by no means assumes that FACT will come to an end. “There’s going to be some money for the youth programs, and while it might be a competitive RFP (request for proposals — from various agencies) situation, we do very well in that arena. I’m not worried yet.” She cites the success of the state’s efforts, which include in large part the FACT campaign, to date. In 2002, smoking by eight graders fell by 30
nd tenth graders by 22ompared to 2000. Overall, says Collins, youth smoking has decreased by 26�”That’s huge. It directly shows that what we’re doing is making a difference.

Making kids into leaders.

But Strive is not just focused on teaching kids the in’s and out’s of media. The program is also concerned with producing strong, politically active members of the community and promoting diversity. This is no secondary goal for Strive. “We’re using mass media to engage youth to develop into business and community leaders, and hopefully put all those different, diverse kids back into the community as powerful adults,” says Molly Collins, associate director of Strive.

“We’ve got kids from all over the city who come to Strive. Having affluent kids from Shorewood working alongside homeless kids is important- everyone learns from everyone else.”

Strive gives teenagers — particularly kids with limited access to resources — the skills and confidence that they otherwise may not have gained. “We’re working mostly with inner city teens, and it pushes them way ahead of where they could be otherwise. We’ve had kids who’ve been able to skip an entire semester off their high school career because of what they’ve learned at Strive,” says Anabel. Strive alumnae have gone on to work for the Oprah show, NBC news with Tom Brokaw, Essence Magazine, and every local television station. These kids are no slackers.

For more information on how to support or enroll with Strive Media Institute, visit www.Strivemedia.com.