Okok Youth Project: Kenya-USA is a cross cultural arts project for youth involving the visual arts and video with a focus on cultural education and global studies through storytelling using creative media.

A series of workshops began in Okok Secondary School , Western Kenya during late 2005. The school is located in a rural area of much poverty and HIV, and has a large number of orphans as students.  In the workshops, students learned to create and design face masks and photodiaries, and also to use still and video cameras. The students formed three groups, each of which worked together to produce a video and a book, together with their masks, that portrayed different elements of Kenya to the US students.  The group topics were: culture, social and political issues faced by youth today, and family and community life. Topics that were covered include the HIV pandemic, child labor, wife inheritance, and polygamy.  Cultural issues such as folk arts, crafts, pottery, poetry, song and dance were captured through field trips within the home and community. 

The books and videos produced by the Kenyan youth will be presented to students at Eleanor Roosevelt HS in New York City in early 2006.  They will create masks plus three corresponding sets of photo diaries, and video in response, followed by an exhibit of all the work by the youth of Kenya and the US . The students in both countries will have learned to use video cameras and will make videos with the purpose of presenting their culture, social and political issues, and their communities to their counterparts.

When the Eleanor Roosevelt project is finished it will be exhibited and then will return to Okok Secondary School in Kenya . Both projects will become models for new projects in schools and community centers.