Youth Project USA-Kenya-Russia
Youth Project USA-Kenya-Russia is an ongoing cultural exchange and workshop program. The last phase of this project, in July 2007, was between secondary schools in New York City and Kisumu , Kenya . The workshop projects were designed to create a collection of face masks, video and photo diaries representing issues important to each of the cultures.
Each group presented a series of videos in which they documented and communicated their personal concerns, culture and social issues through still and video cameras. They created a collection of face masks and kept diaries of their work, wrote captions and told their stories. The New York and Kenyan youth divided themselves into groups, planned field trips within their communities and documented specific issues. They conducted personal interviews among themselves and with neighbors in their communities, documenting such topics as child labor, early marriage, HIV, strong ties of the family and community, girl child issues, and hopes for the future.