Learning, Interest and Voice at Free Spirit Media

One of the challenges of learning organizations is understanding the needs, interests, and motivations of the youth they’re serving. Leadership and educators who come from the same communities as their youth have a heightened sense of those levers, and can effectively use them to push youth to learn and do more than they themselves may have believed possible.

In this video, we follow the story of a young woman who was encouraged to follow her passion for citizen journalism at Free Spirit Media in Chicago. In a few years, she went from being a program participant to a leader who was in the process of directing her first feature documentary at the young age of 16.

Guiding Questions

• What are some of the ways we’ve seen youth in our organization to become highly motivated in the past based on their interests?
• What are issues and themes that we see youth interested in?
• Where do some of those themes intersect with the focus of our organization?
• How do we get our educators to be more in tune with youth interest and motivation?
• What technology and skills may youth learn through processes that involve these interests?