El Salvador

Young Media Producers from Silver Spring and El Salvador Join Forces
Crossing Borders, Gandhi Brigade launches first international youth media exchange.

Silver Spring, Maryland, July 22, 2009— On August 1 eight young film makers fly to El Salvador to join eight peers as part of “Crossing Borders”, a first ever youth media exchange project between the Gandhi Brigade, Quetzalcoatl, and Centro Arte para la Paz. Over the course of ten days the youth delegates will instruct each other in peace making, social analysis, and video production. The project’s outcome will be a series of short videos in which the young producers cross language and culture to explore critical issues that affect young people in both El Salvador and the United States. These finished pieces will be screened before community audiences in both countries as a catalyst to dialogue and understanding.
Gandhi Brigade youth spent the last 4 months exploring the culture and history of El Salvador, learning Spanish, getting trained in peer instruction, and raising money for the trip. The exchange is being funded by the Chino Cienega Foundation but the high school and college students have raised more than $7,500 in matching funds.
In addition to covering the cost of airfare and accommodations in Suchitoto, the youth are raising money to purchase two video production kits so their Salvadoran counterparts can continue to create documentaries after the conclusion of the trip. The three youth groups will exchange video and other media over the internet.
The project was initiated by Heather Bradley Kubo, program director at Gandhi Brigade Youth Media in Silver Spring, Maryland. This will be Bradley Kubo’s second youth media project in El Salvador. In 2004 she organized a photography project that traced the theme of remittances through the eyes of Salvadoran youth. The photographs and her findings were published in a book, Through our Lens, printed by the United Nations Development Program- El Salvador.
“This initiative is both innovative and imperative. The “Crossing Borders” project provides a real way for youth to reach out to one other across social, national, and class borders to find positive solutions to current global youth issues that affect young people in the US, EL Salvador, and beyond,” says Bradley Kubo. Silver Spring Maryland is home to one of the largest Salvadoran communities in Montgomery County. Lately they have been caught between worsening unemployment and anti-immigration pressure from vigilante groups like Save Maryland. There is growing fear in Montgomery county about the violent influence of gangs like MS-13. One of the purposes of the exchange is to understand more fully the connections between American involvement in El Salvador, poverty, migration, and violence in an effort to strengthen and unify our community.
All of the group members are local leaders in the Gandhi Brigade Promotores program; a highly innovative popular education model in which young people learn how to instruct their peers in media production and group facilitation. The Salvadoran delegation will implement this model using a new trans-cultural curriculum that was developed by Bradley Kubo and Susan Shapiro, a Silver Spring consultant with many years of international training with the Soros Foundation. The curriculum will then be brought back to the home communities of the participating Salvadoran youth.
The Gandhi Brigade is a youth media organization based in Silver Spring, Maryland, which promotes peace and social justice through community media projects. The Gandhi Brigade’s mission is to transform young people by helping them transform their community. In Gandhi’s phrase, “We must become the change we seek.” Since 2005 Gandhi Brigade has been working with minority, immigrant, and disabled young people, showing them how they could use media— video, photography, and graphic design— to explore, engage, and transform the world they live in. Through media, Gandhi Brigade youth have inspired and mobilized the Silver Spring community around issues of immigration, youth adjudication, and public space.

For more information:
Richard Jaeggi,
Executive Director Gandhi Brigade
301-957-0159
[email protected]
www.gandhibrigade.org