Hi everybody,
We hope all of you are staying in and staying safe and well.
Before we go Arm Chair Time Traveling, I’d like to share with you what’s going on at Story Stitchers during the pandemic.
Emeara Burns, the Steward Family Foundation Program Director at Saint LouisStory Stitchers, joined Stitchers Youth Council as a 10th grade student, serving since 2015, and is now 22 years old and quite a youth leader. In position she has brought significant changes in youth recruitment and empowerment to the program. Together with our audio engineers, Ntegrity and Chris Pendleton, we have a strong, young, tech-savvy staff. This has been especially important during the Covid-19 pandemic. We are working to move Story Stitchers programs into virtual realms, continuing to communicate with under-served youth, who are now even more isolated, to impact youth needs and mental wellness, and through them, to help our communities. We received a City of St Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant this year to create a series of youth-led podcasts. We have published a new trailer and three pilots for StitchCast Studio here: https://stitchcaststudio.podbean.com/
Don’t miss new episodes! Follow StitchCast Studio!!!
We will record 100 under-served youth and produce at least 10 new episodes before the grant is done. Youth earn $100 over 4-weeks of small group workshops, make new friends, and learn about journalism and audio engineering. These are all being done in a virtual room for now and are led by Emeara, Ntegrity, and Chris. We are working to continue the project into 2021. If you are or know a young person who is interested in Story Stitchers, please contact us at programdirector@storystitchers.org
And now I hope that you will Arm Chair Time Travel with us and watch this short, happy video, edited by Cali during his STL Youth Jobs internship at Story Stitchers last spring. It’s about the trip we took to Seattle to present at Change Philanthropy’s Unity Summit last fall. It was an incredibly fun and life-changing trip for the eight young people who went on the journey to share their work in social change through the arts with a national audience, with support from Missouri Foundation for Health and the Unity Summit.
Thank you for all the love and support. We are sending it right back to you.
Stay safe and be well,
Susan Colangelo, President, Saint Louis Story Stitchers
