a documentary project produced by youth with incarcerated parents
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First off - as you'd expect with a December email - WE COULD USE YOUR DONATIONS! We have two new groups of fantastic youth going through production training, and a slate of new films we're hoping to produce in 2019. Even a donation of $100 can sponsor a young person through our 3-month camera intensive. It provides life-changing skills and opportunities, and also helps foster a much-needed voice that will soon be reporting on critical issues in the criminal justice system. You can make tax-deductible donations HERE. THANKS!

2018 has been a pivotal year for Echoes.

Our long-term vision has shifted. Instead of working toward a single feature documentary, we are now building an ongoing youth-reported journalism initiative. This means we're building out our curriculum, training pathways, and our partner networks, with the goal of building capacity and maximizing our impact for the long haul.


This year we've also expanded our scope beyond just parental incarceration.  Moving forward we're exploring all the ways the justice system interacts with young people. This includes juvenile justice, school safety, foster care, neighborhood policing, youth courts, and restorative justice.... It also includes taking a fresh look at the science and sociology that our criminal justice system is based on, as well as documenting innovative approaches and best practices that are emerging around the country.


Here's a few other Highlights:

In February we launched our journalism initiative and gave a sneak peek of our first story at WYNC's Greene Space.  


This spring we worked with Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice to create video profiling initiatives around the city working to increase public safety without the addition of more police. It was super interesting and inspiring to profile community justice centers, violence interrupters, as well as experiments in using architecture, design, re-allocation of police resources.


Early summer we worked with Council of State Governments Justice Center to film a tour of Cheshire Correctional Institution and document their ground-breaking young adult unit, and crew member Steven Montoya interviewed Governor of Connecticut. The story we created ran on Now This News - viewed over 120,000 times.


In July we teamed up once again with American Friends Service Committee and ran another successful summer camp, bringing together an amazing and diverse group of youth and creating  three short films.

 
In the fall we launched two junior crews who are going through our camera training academy:
We have one crew going in Union Square - building on the work of summer camps...


And a second crew recently launched through a new partnership with Friends of Island Academy - an amazing organization working with young people who are formerly incarcerated on Rikers Island.  We're teaching a production bootcamp and prepping new journalism pieces about the closing of Rikers. 
 
Perhaps most importantly, the senior crew and I went on our first (and hopefully annual) retreat, where we escaped the city for  some relaxation, reflection, and strategizing our path ahead. We realized that maintaining a healthy, grounded and unified crew is perhaps our most important project of all.


We'll end the year with a short piece that crew member Linda Ricard created as her "mission statement" film. Please don't forget to donate.  Happy Holidays and here's a to a 2019 full of peace, joy, and justice.
Please contact us with questions, ideas or feedback, and thank you for your support!
Sincerely,
-Jeremy and the Echoes Crew


find out more at EchoesofIncarceration.org