A weatherman surveys Pittsburgh’s educational horizon, peering into schools, libraries, museums, factories, and start-ups. His forecast? Sunny—if we want it to be.

Pittsburgh youth talk youth leadership, media, and social justice at the Media Empowerment Student Summit (MESS).

Now thanks to a TED prize, support from the Knight Foundation, and the expertise of Pittsburgh-based MAYA Design, anyone with a smartphone can access a virtual story corps booth and record oral histories, interviews, and more.

Jessica Pachuta is project codirector at Hear Me, a youth empowerment and media initiative at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab. As Director of Hear Me 101, Jessica trains teens in Pittsburgh high schools to create documentaries and bring their messages to decision makers. She spoke with us about what she’s learning from spending so much time hanging out with politically engaged young people through Hear Me.

At the Media Empowerment Student Summit, held in Pittsburgh last weekend, teens learned to be media creators and critical consumers—and how to use media to change the world around them.

With help from the Hear Me project and Allies for Children, Pittsburgh youth led public input on hiring the city’s next police chief.

A partnership between the Hear Me project and Amachi Pittsburgh gave kids with incarcerated parents the chance to tell their stories—and parents the chance to listen.

When kids learn how to create media, not just consume it, a world of opportunities opens up for them to share what matters in their lives.

How one nonprofit in Pittsburgh is using digital media and mentorship to amplify youth voices and spark community change.

Many say no. The libraries of the digital age are becoming community learning spaces, adopting innovative methods to engage a new digital generation of learners.

Hear Me, a project of CMU’s CREATE Lab, strives to make the voices of children heard. This summer, they have chosen a larger-than-life medium that they hope will give children one more way to communicate: billboards. So far, 50 billboards have been erected in Allegheny County and the surrounding region. The topics discussed cover everything […]