The Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (ISSA) youth committee released a video, "Dear 40-year-old me," last month through an in-kind grant from EPIC (Engaging Philanthropy, Inspiring Creatives; iamepic.org/ ).
With the video, ISSA's youth committee hopes to inspire more involvement by young people and adults to make schools and communities safer places for all students, especially LGBT youth.
Since April 19—when the video went live on ISSA's YouTube channel—it's been viewed by about 44,000 people.
"We were very surprised and honored at the video's popularity since we are a tiny organization," said Shannon Sullivan, executive director of ISSA. "The young people feel that way too and they are honored that people would take the time and respond the way that they did. Huffington Post picked it up and from there it's been on blogs, various newspapers and other websites like Buzz Feed, SheWired, Devour, Chicagoist. We are getting calls from reporters across the country and it's something we never anticipated."
"Youth committee members are basically the leaders of all of our work at the alliance," Sullivan added. "They meet quite often with staff, other volunteers and ISSA board members to help guide our decision making process because they are the ones who are most impacted by the work that we do."
The goal of this project, Sullivan explained, was to assist ISSA with its messaging surrounding the issues that they work on and how that impacts students. ISSA reached out to EPIC, a Chicago-based group. According to its website, the organization "pairs hand-picked volunteers from the advertising and design industries with Chicago-based nonprofit clients dedicated to education, children and families."
EPIC put together a team and the team decided that ISSA needed to produced a short film featuring young people. The EPIC team and ISSA members, including the youth committee, came up with the "dear 40-year-old me" concept (reminding their adult selves about the work they did as teenagers to make things better for the LGBT community), a flip on the "dear 16-year-old me" films that have already been released by other individuals and organizations.
A number of students were involved in the project both in the city of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. ISSA didn't choose the students who took part in the video, they all volunteered. The video was shot during ISSA's youth summit, which was recently held at Evanston Township High School.
"It's so inspirational to have people come up to me to say that they saw the video," said Grace Gonia of Lyons Township High School. "It's incredible that it got so much attention and I hope that other organizations can use it to raise awareness about LGBTQ high school student's experience."
"I'm glad that our video and personal stories will inspire youth not only in Illinois but all across the web. I'm glad I got to take part in this. It means that now ISSA is helping young people both directly and indirectly with this video," said Crystal Ramirez of Lincoln Park High School.
Abe Akande of Lyons Township High School said, "The video is more than I expected. It got my point across and it made people see who we really are. It humanized the LGBT youth community and made people see our bare hearts, and it hit close to home for a lot of people."
Sullivan was in attendance during the filming and said she wasn't surprised by what the students said. However, she was moved her to tears hearing how much they are impacted by their present situations, including unsupportive families and/or schools. Although some students come from unsupportive environments, Sullivan noted that they still have strong and powerful visions for their present situation and the future.
As for future outreach Sullivan said, "I really encourage LGBT and allied adults to be active on youth issues within the schools or with homelessness or the child welfare system. There are a lot of things we aren't involved in that we can be more active in like running as a community member for local school council in Chicago or running as a community member for a seat on your local suburban school board."
ISSA provides professional development for teachers, assistance in creating gay-straight alliances (currently there are 140 high schools GSA's and one middle school GSA in Illinois) and support for teachers in places where LGBT-inclusive curriculum is not accepted.
See www.illinoissafeschools.org for more information. To view the video, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvuIVfzGtww.
