Sundance DocSource

DOL announces funding recipients, bringing total of YouthBuild supported programs to 228.

The project has recently begun filming, with initial interviews with founder Dorothy Stoneman, and key participants from the early years of YouthBuild, and the primary year-in-the-life focus has shifted from North Philadelphia to Newark, NJ, where there are exciting developments as YouthBuild Newark Executive Director Robert Clarke was recently awarded $5 million in government funding to replicate YouthBuild programs across the state of New Jersey.

We filmed at the YouthBuild 30th anniversary in Washington DC in March, where Dorothy Stoneman celebrated the ongoing work and the news from the Department of Labor that there would be a significant increase in funding to expand YouthBuild in 2009.  For background to the film, we have been filming with Dorothy Stoneman at the YouthBuild USA headquarters in Boston, and filmed interviews that explore the stories of her civil rights work with Leroy Looper, her former Harlem colleague and mentor, and his ongoing work in San Francisco.

In June, we filmed the announcement of the new funding, with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and Dorothy Stoneman announcing the upcoming allocation of funding for YouthBuild programs around the country.  The funding news meant good news for many more programs this year – almost two times more than were funded in 2008 – but the numbers applying were also higher, as more learn about the program, the need for YouthBuild continues to grow.  Several YouthBuild programs learn the hard news that they are not awarded DOL funding, and their operations are imperiled, as operating costs are hard to raise in the face of a full blown recession.  Dorothy rolls through calls to reassure program directors around the country that she will help to secure funding in other ways for them.  It’s a good and bad week all at once.

We recently filmed the Newark graduation, where 2009 YouthBuild participants mourned the loss of their classmate Edwin, as they celebrated their next steps into a new world of independent living; we will track a handful of the 2009 graduates to see how their lives unfold in parallel with the younger participants in the year ahead, as some may become mentors to the younger participants in an organic way through YouthBuild Newark.

Full production will begin at the start of the upcoming YouthBuild academic year, with the selection of potential YouthBuild candidates and their immersion into mental toughness training starting in mid and late August, and we will be filming the Newark and parts of the North Philadelphia mental toughness training programs.  Both groups have had significant increases in the numbers of youth applying; with no advertising or active recruitment, Newark recently received over 2000 applications for approximately 200 spots.

The film may open with a poignant scenes that illustrate the stakes these young people face.  In May 2009, a young man is gunned down and killed in Boston in a suspected gang retalitaion; at the sentencing, the judge reads the young man’s unmailed application letter to YouthBuild, filled with hope to change the path of his life.   In July, a YouthBuild Newark 2009 graduate is shot and killed one week before he is to graduate.  The news was extremely hard for the YouthBuild Newark family, as Edwin Munoz is the fourth Newark participant in the past two years who was killed before reaching the end of the program.

Over the year, the film will journey at key moments to other YouthBuild programs in North Philadelphia, Brownsville TX, Minneapolis and San Francisco, to explore how youth are transforming diverse communities while battling similar economic and personal challenges.