July 14, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Asian American Journalists Association has been awarded a $1,500 grant by the nonprofit organization, Journalism That Matters, for a media demonstration project entitled "The Living Textbook."
During the 2010-2011 school year, "The Living Textbook" will work with a class of 7th-grade Arab-American students in a Dearborn, Mich. public school. AAJA will provide the students with digital cameras and other technology to train them on information-gathering and story-telling skills.
The project will help the middle school students to tell their stories and the stories of their families and communities using multimedia and the Web throughout the 2010-2011 school year, and AAJA will design a curriculum guide for teachers from the experience.
"Thank you to Journalism That Matters for its support of this innovative project," said Sharon Chan, AAJA national president. "The Living Textbook will give voice to underrepresented youth in the media, and more importantly, give them the tools to continue speaking out."
The Journalism That Matters grant will provide monetary and mentoring support to for the project and allow its coordinators, Emilia Askari and Joe Grimm, to attend a two-day meeting in August at the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute.
The project is one of three that AAJA's Executive Leadership Program graduates are conducting in Chicago, Detroit and New York. The projects are funded by grants from the McCormick Foundation, The Ford Foundation and Microsoft and are designed to ensure that Asian-American voices are not lost in the changing media landscape through multimedia skills training, digital entrepreneurial efforts, and educational outreach.
"We're honored that Journalism That Matters has given 'The Living Textbook' this vote of confidence," said Dinah Eng, director of AAJA's Executive Leadership Program. "We hope the project will be a model for other communities that want to encourage young people to tell their own stories using multimedia tools."
Askari, a former reporter at the Detroit Free Press now teaches environmental journalism at the University of Michigan, where she is also a master's student in the School of Information. Grimm, a former editor at the Detroit Free Press, now teaches in Michigan State University's journalism program, and is a digital explorer-entrepreneur.
The Michigan Interscholastic Press Association is supporting "The Living Textbook" with a $300 scholarship for project teacher, April Kincaid, who teaches social studies at the McCullough-Unis School in Dearborn, to attend a summer workshop for journalism teachers.