Washington and YAMI U

It’s Saturday and the rain is starting. I am in Washington, D.C. for the Youth AIDS Media Institute (YAMI) pilot program to train young people in novel technological approaches. This amazing event relies on significant input from each participant in designing a national AIDS awareness program. I am chaperoning four of our PeerCorps youth, Megan Benevides, Peter Keto, Matt Hawkins and Chris Downs, all communications students from Fitchburg State College (you can view their pics and bios under "Weekly Volunteers"). The innovative training sessions are sponsored by Motorola Foundation and our funding partners in our 2007 and 2008 PSAs, Cable Positive and its Tony Cox Community Foundation.

Seventeen youth from New England, New York and Washington have come together three days ago for the week-long production workshop. Separated into four teams, our TeenAIDS volunteers are assigned to handle major tasks including writing, research, production and filming. As I write this blog, they are appearing in the PSA shoot that will air on cable stations later this year.

The youngest participant is 16 years old; the oldest is 24. The group is evenly divided among females/males with a few more high school students than college age. Racially and ethnically, it is a mixed group as well. After a getting-to-know-each-other period, they settled down to flush out the theme based on "There's no LOL in HIV" as the tag line to the campaign. But how to hook youth?

Eventually, they chose to use a graduation idea where youth are shown as typical yearbook entries. For example, "Best Dressed... except when it comes to wearing a condom" (featuring Matt); "Most Popular... until her partners found out they were infected" (Megan); and "Most Valued Player... too bad his helmut was his only protection" (Chris). Peter "starred" as the Emoticon (emote-icon) symbol with his legs in red tights!

A typical day starts with a group buffet breakfast and notices from the staffers. Then the teams break into small and intense discussions on these components: print; webcast; texting: and video. The work continues through evening with lunch and dinner breaks and plenty of laughs. it is no exaggeration to say these seventeen youth have bonded and will be texting for many months to come.

When asked what he thought about YAMI, Peter exclaimed, "Boss!" Megan described it as "... bringing AIDS education to a new technological level." Matt called it "An incredible experience." Chris said it was "An amazing opportunity." I am very proud of their contributions to the group effort.

Cable Positive’s Thomas Henning, Jennifer Medina Matsuki, Max Johnson, Patrice Armour and Parita Patel have done an incredible job putting together this major logistical event with the help of Motorola; “the watsons” (creative team); Look Alikes (filmmakers) and many other professionals.

Motorola Foundation donated $250,000 to fund the program and gave each youth a Krave ZN4, a multi-purpose phone to use and we have just learned, to keep! Zunita Henderson, Senior Manager, Account Marketing, made the announcement official. Together with Tavius Jackson, the two Motorola reps made sure that YAMI-U was given everything it needed to succeed. The students have been texting, shooting, accessing the internet and finding new ways to use these handheld devices. I wrote a White Paper for the Conference training manual that talks about how new, emerging technologies is rapidly replacing the old, tried and true communication modes (see link to YAMI).

I would like to thank the wait staff that served our meals and snacks at the Hilton Garden Inn: Denise Delaney and Gennaro Scotto di Luzio, both friendly and gracious people (note: their supervisor George Hummel should be proud).

Postscript: We had a brief sit-down meeting with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in the ornate Senate Russell Building on Capital Hill. He was interested in their work and was most gracious to have the Senate photographer take our group photo. Before the meeting, we visited the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials. We also conducted interviews and outreach with scores of youth on the subject of teen thinking on AIDS vulnerability and how they communicate with friends (see my following blog for answers).