This campaign is the result of a partnership between KQED's Youth Media Corps and YouthSounds. These programs give youth a chance to voice their opinions through production. Youth make short movies or Web sites. These two programs do not tell youth what to do, it's 100% up to the youth to create their own ideas. However, the programs do teach youth how to use technical equipment the right way and help make ideas into reality.

KQED's Youth Media Corps' high school-aged participants choose a topic that's important to their community, and produce a broadcast quality video for KQED channel 9 and web component at www.kqed.org/youthmedia. By adding youth voices into the regular mix of mainstream media, the KQED YMC ensures accurate, relevant and fair representation of issues that affect youth and their communities.

Youth Sounds believes that if young people are given positive support and space to articulate how they see themselves and the world around them, they will learn to think in new ways, learn to challenge dominant viewpoints, and learn to interact with a world larger than the confines of their neighborhood.

Video enables the voice of youth to reach across audiences, for youth to become pro-active agents for change and not merely respondents. In their stories are the persistent and emerging issues that matter to them‹issues for which researchers, politicians and adults are constantly mining.

The process of storytelling helps youth confront and express their political, creative and social selves. Collectively, these stories reflect the concerns of our youth as well as the people, institutions, and opportunities that define their community and shape their everyday experience.