A youth media project sponsored by The Skillman Foundation in Detroit has launched its site with a name change from KidSpeakNeighborhood News to Our Life in the D.

Cynthia Burton

The new name came from the youths themselves, says Cynthia Burton of Michigan’s Children, which is running the program.

The participants “did not like the word “kids” in KidSpeak Neighborhood News, so we invited them to come up with a new name,” Burton, the project director, said. “The group came up with more than 40. We then went around the table and asked them to choose three that they liked and talk a bit about why the liked them.

“This was a really wonderful conversation that revealed fun, loving, sincere, inventive, worried, caring, Detroit-loving teenagers. I was surprised by how honest they were in their assessment of each name and how serious they undertook the mission to rename themselves.”

Meanwhile, the new site, ourlifeinthed.com is up and publishing work by about a dozen high school students who received media training over the summer.

The participants “did not like the word “kids” in KidSpeak Neighborhood News, so we invited them to come up with a new name,” Burton, the project director, said. “The group came up with more than 40. We then went around the table and asked them to choose three that they liked and talk a bit about why the liked them.

“This was a really wonderful conversation that revealed fun, loving, sincere, inventive, worried, caring, Detroit-loving teenagers. I was surprised by how honest they were in their assessment of each name and how serious they undertook the mission to rename themselves.”

Meanwhile, the new site, ourlifeinthed.com is up and publishing work by about a dozen high school students who received media training over the summer.

The project, a winner in the second Knight Community Information Challenge, is seen as a way to boost involvement in Detroit neighborhood issues in a city where close to 40 percent of the population is functionally illiterate. The project hopes to engage youth and their families in opportunities to create content that will help fill communications gaps, bring young voices into public debate and empower residents and communities to create positive changes.

Burton said she hopes Detroit teens will use the site as well as parents and decision-makers. In addition to social media marketing, the project will produce posters to put up at neighborhood centers and cards for outreach people to hand out at community meetings.

The project expects to train more youth contributors and hopes to form partnerships with other organizations that worth with young people and may want to share content.

“Michigan’s Children also will be doing more work in Detroit and is hiring policy and admin folks to staff an office there. I am hoping the new people can help us connect with more groups who might want to work with us in a network,” Burton said.

Developing a media projects for youth from scratch is challenging, and the project had to navigate trust issues in recruiting young trainees in different neighborhoods.  But the rewards are evident.

“Things are far from perfect and it takes a lot to get a story finished and posted,” Burton said. But for this group of young people who six months ago did not know why anyone would use the Internet to communicate with others, or did not really know much about journalism, they are rocking.”