Mission Statement: 
To inspire and enable all young people of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and surrounding communities to realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens. All of the Boys & Girls Club’s programming reflects our core mission statement. Our programs are based on physical, emotional, cultural, and social needs of girls and boys, program activities in five areas are offered:

 

• Character & Leadership
• Education & Career
• Health & Life Skill
• The Arts

Goals:

 

• Provide access to communication with children worldwide in a controlled and safe environment.
• Provide a way for the Northern Cheyenne Nation to record their history and traditions on film in order to record and safe keep their valued heritage.
• Provide media training as a way to empower children and teach them film and photography skill-sets.
• Provide Entrepreneurial mentorship training and new educational opportunities
• Provide cultural exchange opportunities so that the children of the Northern Cheyenne Nation can become proud and share their heritage with others worldwide.

Feasibility study. Under the hospice and invite of The O.P. and W.E Edwards Foundation and the Northern Cheyenne Nation. Media4good set out to do a feasibility study of need and to do so visited many schools and projects in Montana.

Boys And Girls Club Of The Northern Cheyenne Nation was chosen because of the great work they do with children, their very genuine grassroots approach and because they are very proactive and respected for the good work that they do with the children most in need.

Rubie Sooktis a Cheyenne Elder and respected filmmaker was chosen to develop the Youth Interactive Program and tailor its benefits to the need of her people.

A series of long talks and discussion to allow Youth Interactive to be accepted, wanted and find ways for it to best serve the children and Northern Cheyenne Nation as a whole.

Summer start a few filming workshops took place as a test within the summer festivities.

September the MOU was signed between all partners, direction and plans agrees.

October the hardware equipment was bought by media4good and sent to Rubie Sooktis.

Equipment tests / editing / cameras / first edits of summer workshops.

February Release forms drafted and agreed by all partners. The children can now film, photograph and post online. Workshops begin in ernest…

In 2011 our aim is to keep supporting the work of Rubie sooktis. She is already delivering an incredibly powerful creative workshops to her students, which in time we hope could lead to jobs in media for the most talented students. Once the program has been running well for a full year we will monitor progress and make an appraisal before perhaps expanding the benefits for other schools and children in the reservation.

Extraordinary the S-Corner Clinic and Community Development Organization has served the community of Bennett land since 1990.

They are tirelessly doing remarkable and groundbreaking work on the ground in a four square miles area home to approximately 3,500 families.

Where? Bennett Land is a densely populated and desperately poor inner city community located two miles west of downtown Kingston. Most of the residents live in “tenement yards” comprising of four or more families. Almost three out of five dwellings are a single room, often constructed from scraps of wood and zinc (galvanized metal). In these areas residents live with sub-standard physical, social infrastructure and limited sanitary amenities.

The Cause. The high levels of unemployment, teenage pregnancies, school dropouts, as well as the stigmas ascribed to inner city residents, has contributed to a pervading low self concept and esteem of the residents. These factors help to create an environment that the residents are constantly exposed to violence of political, criminal and or domestic nature. Bennett land is characterized as a ‘garrisson / inner city / ghetto’ community.

The standard of living is lower and the unemployment rate is higher that most other communities in Jamaica. Youth from communities like Bennett Land are the main contributors to the high national crime rate through violence, due to lack of hope, education and opportunities available to them.

Angela Stultz an inspiring role model who grew up not far from the Bennett Land ghetto where S-Corner is based. These West Kingston neighborhoods are known as ‘garrison’ communities because the rival gang factions keep so many guns in their arsenals. After educating herself out of poverty, and becoming a social worker, she decided to return to the community and use her skills where they were badly needed—mediating between the rival gangs.

Her gang negotiating skills and methods are being applauded by the police. Crime figures last year prove just how effective she has been in her endeavor to stop gun crime in her community. The fight is multi faceted but Angela is determined to fight crime from the roots by bringing the gang leaders in and for them to take the lead and drop their guns as a sign of change and newfound manhood and bravery.

Her end objective is to shift power dependency from guns and gangs to positive and sustainable means of earning.

“The outstanding phenomenon of Jamaica is that the country has one of the most unequally distributed incomes in the world.” unicef.

Bennett land in Kingston, Jamaica is one of the poorest and most deprived ghettos in an already economically challenged area. it has been designated a ‘garrison community’ due to the high-level of weapons and violence in the community.

Young people find it hard to break the cycle of violence and retribution that is often seen as the only way to survive.

S – Corner through a holistic approach are tackling the problems faced hands on. Through a variety of health, education, environmental workshops and providing basic sanitization to households, their incessant work has impacted positively on the community, but access to internet and the modern education tools to break the illiteracy cycle was crucial and recognized by the whole community as the only way forward to get youth off the street and able to access further education as a way out of ghetto life.

We chose to partner with S – Corner because they are a very pro active partner with a proven track record in this community. And we both understood it would take hard sustained long term commitment and work to enable young people born in this ghetto who see no way out, to have the opportunity to benefit from Youth Interactive, learn new skills and get the support needed on the ground to maintain behavioral change.

The building of a Youth Interactive Learning and community Center in Jamaica is complete and is benefiting the children in one of the worst garrison ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica.

Goals:

• To build a long awaited creative education facility, which delivers photography and video workshops and provide computer school for 150 disadvantaged children.
• Provide a creative literacy-learning center for adults, teaching and giving them access to computers and the Internet for the first time in their lives.
• Provide the local community with its first social centre to gather and learn.
• Provide the local children and community with its first book library to encourage reading and learning.
• Provide access to communication with children in classrooms worldwide in a controlled and safe environment.

TOGETHER WE BEGAN BUILDING THE VISION … The building plans were created with the input, approval and signature of the community. The building work began. Click to see plans / architectural design ( pdf)

IN SPITE OF 4 HURRICANE AND HUGE SETBACKS, THE DREAM WAS ACHIEVED. The community members and gangsters all put themselves to work and contributed their ‘sweat labor’ to help us finish the building after we ran short of funding due to four hurricanes in 2008.

 

• This center is now a place that empowers children and adults by teaching them to develop creative skill sets and connect with to children and others around the world.
• The community have named it “The Progressive Empowerment Center” and it will do just that by offering this community the hope to see that gun violence is not the only way to a better future. That there is another world out there; other children live different everyday realities and they can too.
• We opened ‘progressive empowerment centre’ with a big bang in August 2009
• One good deed invites another – No one had visibly invested in the people of this garrison ghetto in this manner before – Youth Interactive is big news! As a result the political representative of the area wanted to use the launch of the YI center of learning as a photo opportunity for the local papers. We agreed and in return S-Corner was handed a check for one million Jamaican dollars /approximately (11,000.00 $) to help towards a new clinic facilities for the ghetto.
• A win, win for this community, media attention for their achievement and funding for an improved medical facility. Better medical care will now be available to residents who cannot afford to go to the main hospital.

 
NURTURE, TIME AND CARE DELIVERED…

Jane Klonsky, a famous Getty photographer, kindly volunteered and gave the children of the Bennett land ghetto a truly inspiring five-day workshop. Jane launched the YI creative vision and delivered the impact needed to reach young hearts. Her workshop was a resounding success for all and awakened the whole community to the benefits of creativity and the arts.

THE BUILD ILLUSTRATED: 2008 / 09: (photos to show here and in ‘past’ events blog).

ACHIEVEMENTS

 
In just a few months the ‘Progressive Empowerment Center is fast becoming a beating heart in the Bennett land community providing a real multi purpose learning and socializing hub for young and old.

It now offers residents GSAT preparation, home-work assistance, parenting skills workshops, health care prevention classes, adult literacy classes and, of course, computer, photography and long awaited film making workshops for the children starting 2011.

The community has come together and fundraised to build a wall around the center and Long Trail School, Vermont USA and Bentley Wood School London UK helped and fundraised to build a toilet facility for the Progressive Empowerment Center. The toilet is now opened and in use and the wall is built because of this wonderful cohesive team work.

In 2011 our aim is to provide much needed teaching classes to help support the center to thrive further.

To reach our goal we need YOUR help to raise funds to pay teaching staff so that they can teach, inspire, support and continue to deliver the desperately needed classes.

Join us in doing good work for these children. Donate

Land for Tillers Freedom, known as LAFTI for short is a unique movement.

It has been in existence for over 40 years now. Their vision is enabling tillers to acquire and own a small piece of land (at least one acre a household) for subsistence farming.

The central idea is ownership of cultivable land gives the impetus for the poor to become self-reliant. It would in turn form the basis for free-ing them from social servitude and economic dependence.

A vision handed down by the Mahatma Ghandi. LAFTI has managed to acquire, and distribute about 10,000 acres of land in the past 40 years of its existence. LAFTI is now looking to build on land sucees and help educate its youth out of poverty.

Khrishnamal Jagannathan is an eighty five year old disciple of Gandhi. She has been proclaimed India’s Joan of Arc by the women’s world summit organization in1999 and crowned by her own government “Lotus of India”.

Amma has transformed the lives of millions of India’s no cast untouchables known as Dhalits. And as a result, she is known to her people simply as Amma – mother of all.

Amma has dedicated her life to the betterment of her people with the sprouting up of schools and nurseries, brick and house building projects, small industrial workshops, new agricultural projects all built on the land she has acquired for the poor.

Krishnamaal was the first woman untouchable in Tamil Nadhu to ever graduate

We set out together in November 2007 with a vision to bring 21st Century education facilities to the Dhalit children of Tamil Nadu, India.

In listening to our grassroots partner LAFTI, we realized that to get support from the community we needed to find a holistic approach to the problems they face.

We understood that by offering benefits for the community as a whole, we would win hearts and minds. This was a solution from within to tackle the current lack of parental support for education. After several meetings with the community leaders we understood that the problems faced were complex.

Most adults are illiterate and don’t understand the use of education. People are hungry and children, are a valuable workforce. Children drop out of school and are used for labor or to look after the younger ones while parents go to work.

From the start, the community loved the Youth Interactive vision and the fact that we listened, learnt, consulted them and cared about their needs. They clearly understood the economic benefits of having creative training, knowing a lot of Dhalits have made a good career in Bollywood in spite of their lack of education.

It is also common knowledge that the new computer boom has provided a lot of employment in the cities of India for those lucky enough to know how to use them.

So together we set out a working plan to empower the next generation. A plan in which the village – fund would contribute and support the upkeep of the YI Centre and a promise that YI educational vision will be supported.

The building of a Youth Interactive School, Center of Communication and the Arts which also includes a hostel is complete and benefits the Dhalit children and community of Tamil Nadhu as follows:

Goals:
The Youth Interactive Ottathatai Hostel, Day Care Centre and Community Centre provided in October 2009.

• Capacity of hostel for 35 children who are orphaned or come from a violent/alcoholic household
• A crèche centre for the very young children in the community to serve approximately 120 children and allow their parents to go and work the fields for food as a result.
• Provide the local community with a kitchen and vegetable garden, which will be used to feed the children attending the centre, the elders at lunch and some parents who are too poor to eat in the community.
• Provide the local community with a long awaited creative education and computer school for 35 disadvantaged children who have dropped out of school and provide an open literacy centre for adults.

TOGETHER WE BEGAN BUILDING THE VISION …In India, the build took much longer than expected due to a bad monsoon season and then the
unexpected building extension in order to create a hostel to accommodate 40 boys who where homeless.

IN SPITE OF MANY SET BACKS, WE ACHIEVED THE DREAM AND OPENED IN PRAYER – NOVEMBER 2009 !!!

The Ottathattai Youth Interactive center and extension for a hostel to give a home to 40 boys orphaned or who come from a violent/alcoholic household was built and inaugurated on thanks giving day 2009.

THE BUILD ILLUSTRATED: 2008 / 09: (photos to show here and in ‘past’ events blog) + India presentation final.

We concentrated in running the center to benefit all the children’s need first and foremost. We also created vocational classes to teach micro business skills and we fought to get Internet access to the center, so that we can finally bring in computers and connect the center to the outside world.

We now need your help to work on connecting this thriving center to the Internet and supply computers and the teaching staff needed to support the program. The Youth Interactive crèche, school and hostel benefits on average 250 children and their families.