Introduction
The youth culture is often viewed in a negative light. The term youth culture often evokes images of drugs addicts, sexually irresponsive people and criminals. Many programs have been started to help youths avoid engaging in such risky behaviours or help them stop participating in such activities for those who are already in it. The use of arts and the media is one such intervention strategy.
Arts can help youths stay away from engaging in risky behaviours by keeping them busy with constructive activities. Second, arts help youths to connect with each other and share ideas, experiences and worries.
Most importantly, arts instil in the youths various skills with which the youth can use to better their lives for instance by using them to obtain gainful employment (Cahill, 2008). This paper analyzes an arts-based intervention project for the youths. The project is called the EMERGE Media Initiate Project started by the Information Cultural Exchange (ICE).
Project of Choice: The EMERGE Media Initiative Project
Background information about the Project
The Emerging Communities Media Initiative (EMERGE) was started by the ICE to provide young members of the small and emerging communities with training in media-related fields such as editing, writing, program production and scripting among others.
In addition, the project offers English language lessons to the participants. The project was started in recognition of the challenges faced by emerging communities in communication, settling in and accessing essential services.
The types of young subjects being produced by the project
The EMERGE Media Initiative Project aims at producing young radio broadcasters from the small and emerging communities. This project was founded from the realization that many communities are coming up due to increased rate of immigration of people from other parts of the world to Australia. The immigrants often live in communities that are isolated and alienated from the others.
In addition, different communities form in different parts of Australia. Unfortunately, the emerging communities live in isolation and do not get the opportunity to interact with other small or mainstream communities. Immigrants often have their own unique experiences.
The whole process of leaving their home countries and settling in an alien country is a long process that in most cases is full of huddles and challenges. This is more so for the young people. Young immigrants may encounter challenges from social, economic and educational areas (Information and Cultural Exchange, 2010).
Social challenges include a deep need to fit in with fellow young people in a new area. Unfortunately, this need to fit in may lead them to engage in socially unacceptable behaviours such as excessive drinking, drug abuse and sexually irresponsible activities. Economic challenges include poverty and inability to find meaningful and help employment opportunities.
This often happens to immigrants who in pursuit of greener pastures find that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. Immigrants often get low-paying and low-calibre jobs, contrary to their initial expectations.
From the educational perspective, challenges for immigrants include difficulties in catching up with their classmates or difficulties in adapting to the new educational system which is different from the educational system of their home countries. All these challenges facing young immigrants make them vulnerable to illicit behaviours and are thus at high risk of conforming to these behaviours (Cahill, 2008).
The EMERGE Media Initiative Project acknowledges that the media is a very powerful tool of bringing about change in any society. The project focuses on the radio medium because it is the most commonly used communication medium in the emerging communities.
The project aims at producing young people who are experts in radio broadcasting, scripting and production. The young subjects often come together to share their ideas, learn from each other and showcase their talents in radio production and broadcasting (Information and Cultural Exchange, 2010).
The project’s targets
The EMERGE Media Initiative Project targets the small and emerging communities of Australia. These are communities of immigrants from other parts of the world who come to settle in Australia. These emerging communities have several things in common which bind them together. First and foremost, they are aliens in a foreign land. As a result, they feel isolated and out of place.
These feelings can increase the risk of the young people from these communities to engage in risky behaviours. Second, members of the emerging communities need a platform on which they can share their unique stories and experiences. This helps to make their stay in the foreign land a bit easier (Information and Cultural Exchange, 2010).
Third, many members of the emerging communities leave their home countries without their other family members. Most often, they could be young people who leave their home countries and go abroad to advance their studies. They could also be young people who have lacked employment opportunities in their home countries and thus go abroad to look for greener pastures.
As a result, these young people live in the foreign land away from their parents and siblings. In short, they are without the parental guidance that young people need to go through their different stages of development. As a result, young members of the emerging communities are at high risk of engaging in risky behaviours such as drug abuse and irresponsible sexual activities (Hooks, 2009).
Engagement in such activities is on the most part as a result of peer pressure and the need to fit in and be identified with their peers. It is also in part due to frustrations they may encounter in the alien land or the new freedom they now have (Powell, 2007). It is for these reasons that the EMERGE Media Initiative project was formed.
The project targets young people from the immigrant communities who are at risk of engaging in risky behaviours. Through the project, the participants are helped to nurture certain media and technical skills which enable them to produce programs through which the communities can share their life experiences and help each other.
The skills also help them to become self sufficient and to shy away from risky behaviours. In short, the project gives members of the emerging communities a sense of identity which they can be proud of (Kelly, 2001).
Goals of the targets’ involvement
To help the emerging communities communicate effectively with each other
The EMERGE Media Initiative helps the small and emerging communities to communicate with each other. The project helps the communities to produce radio programs through which they connect with each other. The project recognizes the importance of the radio as a communication channel in such small communities.
Members of the communities can share their stories and their experiences of settling in Australia through the radio programs. Because these communities are from distinct origins, they can conduct their programs using their vernacular languages. The vernacular language further helps them to connect with each other because it is one of the common things they share in the foreign land.
In addition, through the telling of stories and sharing of experiences, members of these small communities can help each other out when one or more of their members are faced with problems or challenges (Information and Cultural Exchange, 2010).
To help the emerging communities settle well in Australia
The EMERGE Media Initiative also helps members of the emerging communities to settle well in Australia. This is especially done through imparting skills in the written and spoken English language among the members of the emerging communities. The English language is an important language that is spoken throughout the globe.
By learning the English language, members of the emerging communities are in a better position to interact with the locals. This makes it easy for them to settle down.
Besides interacting, knowledge and proficiency in the English language helps the emerging communities to fit in well in the Australian educational system and also to obtain gainful employment opportunities. This would not be possible if they did not know how to communicate in the English language (Green, 2003).
The EMERGE Media Initiative helps the emerging communities to settle in Australia by teaching them the Australian cultures. Culture is the manner in which people of a given society live. It entails the manner of eating, dressing, and talking to mention but a few.
Culture is important not only in the social scene but also in the business scene. The project teaches the emerging communities the cultures of the Australian people so that they know how to behave in any given situation. This helps to avoid conflicts with the local people as well as culture shock (Kelly, 2001).
Skill development
One of the key achievements of the EMERGE Media Initiative is skill development. The project teaches the young people of the emerging communities a diverse range of skills in the arts. These skills include: story telling, writing, script production, interviewing, editing, recording, program production, and project management among others.
Armed with these skills, the young people from the emerging communities are in a position to produce their own programs that enable them to achieve the purpose of the project. In other words, skill development helps the youth to become independent rather than rely on the support of the project’s managers.
This independence of the emerging communities is illustrated by the program the Voice of the Nile which was started by earlier participants of the projects who are members of the Sudanese community. This program helps the Sudanese people to connect with each other, share their experiences and help each other in times of need.
In addition to using the skills to produce their own programs, the skills also help the emerging communities to obtain gainful employment. The learning programs the participants go through are adequate enough to help them find employment opportunities in the media industry (Information and Cultural Exchange, 2010).
To enable service providers and agencies to provide essential services to the emerging communities
The EMERGE Media Initiate also brings together the emerging communities and service providers. Through the project, members of the emerging communities get to learn where and how they can access essential services. On the other hand, the project helps the service providers to learn about the existence of the emerging communities.
Access to essential services is important for the small and emerging communities like those of the immigrants in Australia. Because these communities are new to the place, they lack the ability to know where they can find such services at cost effective prices (Te Riele, 2006).
Legal, educational, and social protection services are especially important for these communities. Without them, members of the communities particularly the youth can become vulnerable and at high risk of engaging in socially unacceptable and harmful activities.
Conclusion
Youths at risk refer to young people who are vulnerable and have high probability of engaging in risky and irresponsible behaviours that can destroy their lives. Youth at risk include among others young people from dysfunctional families, youths who do not perform well in academics and are therefore likely to drop out of school and youths with bad prior life experiences such as physical or emotional abuse.
Youths at risk are highly likely to engage in drug abuse, irresponsible sexual behaviours and criminal activities (Baker & Homan, 2007). This paper has examined a project initiated by the Information and Cultural Exchange. The project is dubbed the EMERGE Media Initiative and it targets young people from the small and emerging communities of Australia.
Through the project, participants gain skills in a wide range of media-related fields such as writing, editing, production and scripting among others. The project not only helps the members of the emerging communities to stay in touch with each other but it also gives them a sense of identity, the ability to fit in with members of the local communities and the ability to sustain themselves.
Reference List
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Green, B., 2003. Kids from the Local School …? Tele-Pedagogy and the Rock Eisteddfod Discourse. Studies in the Cultural Political of Education, 24(2), pp. 205-23.
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Te Riele, K., 2006. Youth ‘At Risk’: Further Marginalizing the Marginalized? Journal of Education Policy, 21(2), pp. 129–45.