Youthcast Media Group, Inc.

Our main goal is to prepare high school students from under-resourced communities so they can amplify the health, safety and social challenges and solutions in their communities. We train them to produce multimedia journalism that highlights solutions to health and safety disparities where they live. They harness the power of their voices to creatively reflect, engage and empower their communities. In doing so, they also increase their college and career readiness and their agency. We're working to add more partnerships with local and national media organizations to have these multimedia projects published online and/or in print, as well as on our site.
We aim to develop young journalists and communicators whose work informs and educates their communities - including their families - about health disparities and solutions for those problems. YMG also helps reduce (at least by a little) the biggest disparity of all - poverty - by paying stipends to all of the high school and college students who work with us. Our on-the-job training gives them career-bolstering journalism, communications, health, safety and policy experience that few, if any, get in high school. That’s especially true if they have to work in retail or restaurants to pay for their education. These students are reporting, writing, doing multimedia production and editing, and creating social media posts, often under the deadline pressure of a newsroom.
We want to grow our program by building what we think of as a “path to success” for promising high school student journalists.
Our goal is to get our information “seen” by as many people as possible in the communities where the people live and work. Not everyone reads The Washington Post! We want to reach people online, through social media, in person, and in publications and media outlets they trust and read. Our goal is to get our content out where it is needed and can be seen and impact how people learn about and address their own health issues.

Train youth in multimedia journalism. They start in our journalism boot camps, then are funneled into our more advanced workshops, and then into paid YMG internships before or during college. We stay in touch with our most engaged students before and during the college application process and track their progress, offering guidance and connections when we can. When possible, we help the families of these often first-generation college students to navigate the financial aid process and to reach out to colleges for them, as we’ve done with great success in the past. We stay with them as they move on to other internships and ultimately into post-graduation jobs with media and communications companies across the country.

Teach professional and life skills. We are increasingly teaching some of the “softer” skills that many of our students lack. We want our students to know and understand the power of teamwork, the importance of turning up on time, respect for others, and their ethical responsibilities as journalists and professionals of the future.

Expand and deepen our relationships with students. We will continue to expand our reach to students in new schools and areas of the country but will work equally as hard to maintain and deepen our relationships with our alums. Students will be encouraged to complete multiple programs, take on increasing responsibility and develop skills that are valuable to the organization as well as other potential employers.

Broaden our national reach. Our virtual training opportunities allow students from across the country to connect with and learn from each other. Student-journalist teams from Cleveland, Miami, Philadelphia and other parts of the country offer different perspectives on problems and solutions to the health, safety and social issues facing their communities.

Our greatest strength is our creativity, connections to professional media companies, a network of current and former journalists to help us, and our access to local high schools and organizations. We’ve had phenomenal success in raising initial funding and getting support from major foundations. We know that is because we have a great idea that affects the lives of real people and boosts young people out of poverty and on the road to success.
We were at the right place at the right time. We were established and operating right as Black Lives Matter, racial protests, and COVID-19 hit the Black and white communities, and we bring solutions and hope. That timing helped scaleus much faster than we could have otherwise.
Our goals include the long-term success of our students, and we’re very proud of the fact that every one of YMG’s high school students from our first two years is now in college, majoring or planning to major in journalism or related fields such as photography, film or political science. Antonio Hardy, our oldest alumnus and a former intern who designed our logo, began working in Los Angeles in 2019 doing video editing, graphic design, and social media marketing for fashion, music and podcast influencers after earning an associate’s degree from Morgan State University. He now runs ACW Worldwide, an arts organization he modeled on YMG. Our alumni also include an intern who earned a full Posse Foundation scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he studied environmental communications. Other Black and Hispanic alumni got considerable financial aid to attend Syracuse University, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Pomona College and University of Maryland’s honors colleges: one to study journalism and the other to begin work to become a physician’s assistant.
Our goals are ambitious, and we anticipate a continued brisk growth in the next two years. We’re planning to do more workshops, boot camps, live events, media partnerships, and to continue to grow the number of students we train. We're working to stay connected with alumni through events and outreach that keeps them “in the fold” and working with our current students as mentors.
We will hire and build our professional staff as funding allows to help us manage our growth. This will likely include staff members and contractors with program and human resources management experience.

Since 2017, YMG (formerly known as Urban Health Media Project), has trained about 400 students - 90% of whom are of color - to create multimedia journalism content about health, road safety and social issues and challenges. About 90 of these students have been published in media outlets, including USA Today, the Miami Herald, The AFRO and MindSite News. Our work has been published in 28 different media outlets. We've helped students get into top colleges, including NYU, Syracuse and Harvard, with generous financial aid package or full rides. And our virtual training has maintained a near-100% approval rating across all categories.