The Alliance for Children's Rights

The Alliance’s Youth Council is a group of young men and women who recently aged out of the foster care system and are experiencing life on their own for the first time, trying to maintain stability with very little support while working and going to school. Yet these youth are not only interested in their own futures; they are also committed to being leaders in their community and acting as a voice for foster care reform. The Youth Council is a volunteer peer advocacy group with a mission: to make an impact on issues that affect foster youth by using our voices as a collective. By improving programs and systems, we work to create long-term benefits that positively impact our future and inspire effective social change.

The Youth Council Documentary Project (YCDP) started as a way to give former foster youth a vehicle to find their own voice while learning to be advocates. The Alliance’s Next Step Program Director Derric Johnson and Communications Manager Laura Hunt created the project with partner Matthew Williams of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy (IML). For six months a group of ten youth council members participated in a class every Friday night at the IML to create their own personal documentaries on an issue or experience that was important to them. Each youth was given a camera that was generously donated by Deloitte and learned to write, shoot and edit their videos.

The process was long, challenging and life-changing. Not only did the youth learn skills that will serve them for life — responsibility, communication, critical and creative thinking, computer software, video editing, and personal writing to name a few — they also formed a tight-knit leadership group based on trust and mutual respect. These young adults went through a tremendous amount of painful personal history while making these films, and the experience made them closer, stronger and ready to use their own stories to make positive changes. Furthermore, during the process three youth council members participated in California’s Coalition for Youth’s Youth Creating Change conference in Sacramento, where they discussed various issues and ideas for change with fellow youth advocates as well as policy makers and legislators at the Capitol.

The project culminated in a premiere screening of the films at USC, followed by a panel discussion with the youth and a presentation of completion certificates. Since the ending of the class, the group continues to meet monthly and has screened their work for UCLA’s School of Law & Public Affairs, at The Alliance’s Annual Awards Dinner and for groups of foster teens. The Youth Council will continue to use their documentaries to educate and advocate for foster care reform and make a difference in their community.