Nuf Said

Jacob Colker of The Extraordinaries Inspires Chicago Youth

People spend 9 billion hours per year playing solitaire. What if they gave some of that time to support their favorite causes? This is among the questions Jacob Colker was considering when he co-founded The Extraordinaries, a social media technology company that engages people in “micro-tasks” that support organizations or causes by using a mobile phone or web browser.

Jacob Colker

Jacob was they keynote speaker for the Youth 2.0 Recovery Project on January 30^th at Columbia College, where he discussed the power and potential of social media tools to mobilize groups and create change. Through a series of case studies based largely on personal experience, Jacob described how emerging social media tools have decided elections, sparked boycotts, ruined political careers, and roused political dissent.

As an entrepreneur concerned with addressing social problems, Jacob sees a bright future for social media technologies to expose, inspire, inform, and rally groups of people around critical issues. His insights were a valuable addition to a kickoff event attended by over 50 youth from throughout Chicago, all of whom were excited about the opportunity to use social media for social good.

The next step in the process? Youth will be using some of the very social media tools Jacob presented on to poll their peers about the effects of the current economic recession. Using data collected from hundreds of their peers, youth media makers will then create multimedia work that reflects the authentic experiences of Chicago youth. In the end, youth producers will have compiled a series of snapshots that together will form vibrant collage of stories about what it’s like to be a young person living in Chicago in 2010.

‘NUF Said (Network, Unity, Future) is the new name and brand of CYVN’s Youth 2.0 Recovery Reporting Project. Beyondmedia Education youth leader Crystal Jackson won a Flip Cam for the overwhelming favored pick at the Kick Off Event on Saturday January 30th. Congratulations Crystal and thanks for capturing the spirit of our project in a terrific name!!!! Look for changes in our design soon to reflect our new branding strategy for the project.

On January 29-30, CYVN launches the kick off of the Youth 2.0 Recovery Reporting Project. Keynote speakers announced today bring Social Media experts together with Journalists and Social Researchers in order to help prepare youth to monitor how youth in Chicago are faring during the economic recovery.

JACOB COLKER

Jacob Colker is a recognized leader in political activism and issue advocacy, and a leading voice in the use of technology for community engagement. Jacob has managed political campaigns in California, Illinois, and Maryland, and he was one of the first field directors in the country to leverage Facebook® in a major political campaign to win a statewide election. Jacob has also managed issue advocacy campaigns for The International Campaign for Tibet, The 1Sky Campaign, and other non-governmental organizations, both in the U.S. and around the world.

NATALIE MOORE

ALEX MOFFAT-BATEAU

The Issue Teach-In and Social Media Training that CYVN hosts on January 29-30 at Columbia College will bring 60 youth and youth media workers together with social media experts, journalists and policy specialists to create the blueprint for the Youth 2.0 Recovery Reporting Project.

CYVN is thrilled to have the following talent pool join us on Friday afternoon to assist youth in developing polling questions that can monitor how youth in Chicago are faring during the economic recovery.

Journalists and Public Policy Mentors

Ric Estrada Ric Estrada is First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services for the City of Chicago. Prior to joining the City, Ric was for seven years executive director of Erie House, a leading social service agency founded in 1870. Ric holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Loyola University, a master’s in policy and administration from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been selected as an American Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, a fellow in the Leadership Greater Chicago program, and one of the 40 most influential Chicagoans under 40 years of age by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Therese Quinn – An Associate Professor of Art Education and  Director of BFA with Emphasis in Art Education Program since 2002 at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Therese’s interests are educational equity and access in both formal (schools) and informal settings (museums), unsanctioned and resistant uses of public and private spaces, the effects of privatization on public schools, and the roles that art and artists play in social change for justice.

Rob Wildeboer – As a criminal justice reporter for Chicago Public Radio, Rob is responsible for covering courts and politics in the region. Rob has an M.A. in Journalism from Columbia College and a B.A. in Philosophy from Calvin College.

Kari Lydersen – an In These Times contributing editor, is a Chicago-based journalist writing for publications including The Washington Post (where she is a staff writer), the Chicago Reader and The Progressive.Immigration, Latin America, globalization and free trade, environmental issues and environmental racism, human trafficking, the sex industry, civil liberties, media analysis and criminal justice issues are among Kari’s specialties as a reporter, author and speaker.

Rebecca Estrada – Rebecca is the  Director of Youth Options Unlimited (YOU). Rebecca graduated from Loyola University with a major in psychology and minor in women’s studies. Currently, she is earning her Master’s in Business Administration at National Louis University. Rebecca is bilingual and bicultural.

Troy Harden

Troy Harden, Ed.D, LCSW, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Chicago State University. Troy received his Masters in Social Work from Loyola University at Chicago.  A trainer and facilitator since 1991,  he has been responsible for co-creating and facilitating diverse educational learning experiences for men, women, adolescents and children in several countries. His research interests include youth development, cross cultural leadership, and race, class, gender and culture.  His current research project focuses upon African American and Latino males involved in the criminal justice system and re-entry into Chicago Public Schools.

Florian Sichling

Florian Sichling – Florian is a native of Germany, where he received his undergraduate degree in social work from the University of Applied Sciences in Dresden. After several years of working with urban, immigrant youth, Florian came to Chicago in 2005 to pursue doctoral studies in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. In his research he focuses on how neighborhood environments shape the developmental trajectories of urban youth. He currently lives in Edgewater.

Sarah Karp
Karp is the associate editor for Catalyst-Chicago, a 20-year-old independent print and online magazine that covers education in Chicago . Her journalism work has been concentrated on subjects relating to teenagers and families in Chicago . This year, Karp won an Education Writers Association Award, a National Association of Black Journalist Award of Excellence and a Chicago Headline Club Peter A. Lisagor Award. For a year-long series on teenagers, in 2005, she won the Sidney A. Hillman Award. She previously worked for the Daily Southtown and is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Guillermo Gomez – Guillermo Gomez, M.S., is currently the Chicago Director of the Healthy Schools Campaign and is a social justice activist with more than 30 years experience in not-for-profit advocacy organizations focusing on underserved minority communities. He recently completed a four year NIEHS-funded research project, the Partnership to Reduce Disparities in Asthma and Obesity in Latino Schools, with the goal of developing effective strategies for motivating and empowering parents in minority urban communities to create changes for wellness and environmental health in schools. Guillermo is nationally recognized for his advocacy in combating childhood obesity in the Latino community and for building strategies with parents to around the creation of school wellness teams.

The Youth 2.0 Recovery Reporting Project received $95,000 in grants from the ($60K) and the Chicago Community Trust, Rappaport Family Foundation ($35K) in December 2009.

This innovative city-wide program engages a team of several hundred youth serving as researchers, journalists, and media artists to collectively gather findings, develop stories, and produce new media art that will shed light on the well-being of Chicago’s young people during 2010.

The project will provide compelling evidence of art’s powerful role in not only building civic awareness among young people, but also connecting youth to their own political agency through the process of creative art-making, particularly within the context of open source production and information sharing.

Eleven youth media organizations in the city make up the Chicago Youth Voices Network. They include:

Beyondmedia Education

Columbia Links

Community TV Network

Free Spirit Media

North Lawndale Community News

Open Youth Networks

Radio Arte

Street Level Youth Media

True Star Magazine

We the People Media

Young Chicago Authors

Youth pollsters from throughout Chicago have recruited over 850 of their peers to take the NUF SAID youth status survey. The survey, created by young people and distributed through online social networks, asked Chicago youth how the economic recovery is affecting them and their communities.

After 30 days of polling in April and May 2010, youth media makers are now launching the next phase of the project: creating stories that bring to life the data gathered from the surveys. The survey results and youth media will then be presented side-by-side right here on the NUF SAID blog. These insightful stories will amplify the voices of Chicago youth from every corner of the city.

Youth voice. Youth media. Youth empowerment. NUF SAID.