New Approaches: Using Video to Connect Youth to Work
  • Partners
    • Hack the Hood
    • Winnow Design Studio
    • CWIB Workforce Accelerator Fund
  • Research
    • Timeline
    • Reflecting on the Process
    • How you might DIY
  • Insights
    • Hack the Hood's Special Sauce
    • Challenges that Disconnected Youth Face
    • Personas
    • Design Principles for Connecting Youth to Work
  • Ideas
    • Develop a Mentor Matrix
    • Spark a Paradigm Shift
    • Demonstrate Soft Skills
    • Capture Individual Stories
    • Recruit Disconnected Youth
  • Videos
  • Get the Full Report

Spark a Paradigm Shift

A dynamic video that would encapsulate the passion and mission of Hack the Hood to bring youth of color into Tech with an inspired sense of what they can do.
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Benefits of the Paradigm Shift Videos

  • Bring Hack the Hood to the forefront of the conversation about Tech and POC. Create a Tech manifesto, a movement based on Tech as a catalyst for community. Show youth and external audiences that Hack the Hood is much more than coding.
  • Inspire and recruit new Hack the Hood youth. Show youth why being part of Tech is so life changing. And when they are in the program, remind them of their bigger purpose. 
  • Engage with youth culture to discuss larger ideas around Tech in a relevant way.
  • Preserve and spread the magic of Hack the Hood. Capture the message on video so that it can be a consistent motivator in every extended classroom. 
  • Demonstrate the feel of respect, dialogue and inspiration in the classroom in order to train the trainers.

A Call to Action to Get Involved

  • Inspirational videos, aimed at young people of color, to unpack the purpose of getting involved in Tech 
  • Breakdown tech industry basics, and the meaning of the movement for urban communities (modeled after “Story of Stuff & Changing Education Paradigms)
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Structuring the Videos

Video 1. Technology as a catalyst of change 
Tech is the next big paradigm shift, it has and will change everything. It’s not about gadgets, it’s about a level playing field, effecting communication leading to new inventions. It’s happening in big business and it’s happening in communities. Now is the time for POC to get involved in Tech, and for Tech to shift. Get involved so you have a voice and can make change. Exploring cultural history and how that connects w/ technology. Tech is creativity and communication. It is more than coding. It’s bigger than you thought.

Video 2. Urban is Tech 
POC is Tech. Oakland is a creative community of Tech makers outside the mainstream. POC tech inclusion/participation as inherently disruptive. Show the ways that communities of color are already innovating.

Video 3. Youth is Tech
Youth are already shaping Tech. You use more Tech than you realize. You are an expert in what is happening, culturally. Tech wants your voice. Youth have a distinct voice. You are already part of it, make something with it.

Video 4. Hack the Hood is making it happen 
Hack the Hood is proving to youth that they have a future in Tech. Youth have already been changed. They have a better future, a path forward. They are part of a community of POC in Tech and Tech needs to engage them.

How it might look

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Key Points:

“People of color are overrepresented as tastemakers and end-users of Tech, shaping the content, using it in ground breaking ways. Yet we are highly UNDER-represented in the workplace.”

“New technologies change the course of industry and change the way of life. The printing press spread knowledge beyond the church’s walls... Twitter, Vine, Instagram are doing that now.”

“Tech levels the playing field for creators. It’s not longer about convincing a record label to listen to your music. You can deliver it to your audience directly. The only limitation now is how creative you can be...”

“If you think your role in Tech needs to be writing code behind a computer screen, think again. Artists, designers, brand developers, sales people, project managers, builders, testers—all have a place in shaping the next big thing. Google employee: ‘Heck, my job didn’t even exist three years ago! Who knows what’s next?’”

Cautions

  • These videos will require high production and take time to produce well.
  • Presenting this information may not be as powerful as allowing students to “construct” it in the classroom. 
  • Needs tight integration with the curriculum in order to assure they internalize the message.
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