7.28.11 | We were excited to hear about girls in Chicago who are using digital media and old fashioned investigative journalism to take their schools to task on compliance with Title IX, the civil rights law that bars gender discrimination in education and is most known for expanding opportunities for women in sports.
The Fair Shot Project brings girls ages 15 to 17 together from five different Chicago high schools for training in investigative journalism, technology and race and class analysis. This month the girls are meeting regularly at Columbia College to examine whether their own high schools are providing equal opportunity for women and girls. The programs website explains further:
A team of high school girls is learning to use social/mobile media tools to report on how the Office of Civil Rights and Chicago Public Schools [CPS] are responding to a complaint filed in November 2010 by The National Women’s Law Center against 12 U.S. school districts for failure to comply with Title IX.
The issue prompting this campaign is a timely and urgent one. Across Chicago high schools, access to sport and physical activity for girls is spiraling downward. African-American females now represent less than 5% of all high school athletes in America. …
They then share and report out on their findings via this blog and through multimedia Google map, videos, social media networks and Facebook.
The girls are receiving training in topics such as sourcing subjects, interviewing, writing, editing, social media strategy and the use of interactive and digital technology in telling stories.
There are some powerful blog posts already, especially the ones where the girls unpack images of female athletes in the popular media and the section on “microaggressions” where they document their everyday experience with gender, race and class discrimination.
After the summer program the girls will conduct interviews to learn about gender inequity and athletic opportunity for girls in CPS. They will report their findings along with the planned release of a new documentary on the same issues called “In the Game,” produced by Kartemquin Films.
Mindy Faber of Open Youth Networks organized The Fair Shot Project with funding from the McCormick Foundation. Open Youth Networks is a youth media outreach program at Columbia College’s department of interactive arts and media.
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