tms@themodernstory.com

The Modern Story
16
Jun

0

Pre-Departure

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A Hello from Emily

My name is Emily Kwong and I am thrilled to be a 2012 fellow with The Modern Story (TMS). In a world saturated by policies and percentages, The Modern Story valorizes the human voice—the human story—and empowers it to speak loudly and largely. Through student-created photo essays and micro-documentaries, it puts the powers of representation directly in the hands of a young person. It’s a toolbox that behaves like a megaphone, giving them the digital equipment and soft knowledge to share their words, thoughts, and feelings with each other, with their community, with the world. Go watch one of TMS’s 100+ videos on Vimeo. Try the news bulletin about child trafficking, the report about traffic congestion, or the spoken word proclaiming, “I am from the moon, from dilkush and butterscotch ice cream.” See what I mean?

In this way, TMS never purports to “give youth a voice,” but to turn up the volume of their voice. It was this singular, but crucial distinction that attracted me to The Modern Story in the first place. Now, writing this on the plane from London to Mumbai, there aren’t enough adjectives to convey the admiration I have for The Modern Story, the surplus of feeling I feel to be a part of this organization, and my excitement to work with the 2012 TMS class, all 8th and 9th grade students at government schools in Hyderabad, India.

I graduated a little less than a month ago with a B.A. degree and more questions than answers. Through my interdisciplinary curriculum in Anthropology and Human Rights, I become interested in ethnographic writing and the dissemination of personal narrative as rallying point for social change. Those four years were rich in exploration, with forays into print journalism, radio work, oral history and digital heritage work, youth media, and creative, project-based learning as a method of education. I researched digital heritage while studying abroad in South Africa, taught briefly at a youth media academy in inner city Hartford, CT, and interned at an education non-profit that explored global themes through art and media projects.

Were I to draw a Venn diagram with that generous, idealistic faith of a post-grad, these many interests and experiences share in common a desire to lend credence to small yet significant personal stories, undocumented in popular telling, but deserving of being heard. It comes from the value my family has always placed upon listening wholeheartedly to others. The more I learned about The Modern Story, the more its ideology corresponded with these deeply-rooted personal values, strumming the chords of my own belief that people needed stories to survive. It is an ancient phenomenon, an impulse that has sprung up spontaneously in all cultures across time and space. Only the need to nourish, rest, and breathe can claim the same level of vitality. Scientific research is beginning to support what advertisers, authors, and Aristotle have long known. Readers of fiction are revealed to be far more empathetic and socially aware than non-readers. Hooked up to an MRI and shown images of human faces, their hippocampus (that part of the brain dedicated to emotional response) lights up like a firefly. The more I come to understand the science and artistry of storytelling, the more I appreciate its power. For better or for worse, dramatic social change can be affected by one well-told story.

With any hope, we at The Modern Story can inform, inspire, and entertain you with compelling digital stories 100% created, produced, and edited by our students. Keep checking in for profiles of students, their fantastic multimedia work, lessons about teaching, and stories about storytelling. For now, thank you for reading and leave a comment. What’s your favorite story to tell? To hear? To read?

Meet Emily from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Dec, 6

2

Classroom News, Daily Updates, Videos

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Spoken Word Poetry. Our girls deliver!

The Modern Story students at the Railway Girls School have been busy with the creative aspects of their film. As a teacher in this program, I wanted to ensure that the girls voices’ and stories are given ample time for growth and expression. As digital video curriculum programs elsewhere acknowledge, the largest amount of time spent for a video project should be on the creative aspects. Our girls can write. Their humor, strength and absolutely adorable mischief shows through in their first set of spoken word poems dealing with women empowerment.

We will soon be facing the giant challenge of tackling limited working computers, viruses, power outages, and short class time precluding sufficient post production editing. However, with these strong poems and beautiful videos I am confident that The Modern Story is already succeeding in bringing these girls’ voices to the fore of their community as they reflect on local issues that are felt across the globe. This has been an immensely rewarding experience so far and I hope others get to share in the project’s goals and activities in the future.

Check out the video below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVoDLTlzkwU]

Also, for those interested, friends of ours at The Cairo Human Rights Film Festival, run by Dalia Ziada are about to launch their exciting series of events. Check them out if you are in the area: http://www.cairofilm.org/

Dec, 6

3

Daily Updates

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Google Career Panel at Railway School

It is a pleasure to announce that The Modern Story has recently teamed up with Google Hyderabad in an effort to provide TMS students with career counseling and valuable mentorship opportunities. Since Google is a such a respected and well-reputed global company, and since its employees are known to be some of the most promising, sharp and ambitious young professionals out there, we thought it highly inspirational for our students to meet Googlers personally and have the chance to chat with them about educational and professional issues that are affecting them, as they are about to finish secondary school and embark on a more specific course of study.

The first event which brought Google and TMS together was a career panel we organized at the Railway Girls High School on Friday, and the success that it had truly surpassed our expectations! The career panel consisted of 5 Google employees and was attended by more than 100 students. The Googlers represented a variety of backgrounds (some foreign, some Indian; some from a social sciences background, some engineers by profession) and worked in different departments at Google. In planning the event, we specifically aimed to have this diversity, so that the students can learn about different career pathways and get to hear about more diverse professional and educational experiences. And indeed, one of the main ideas that emerged from the career panel, and that was reiterated both by the panelists and by the school teachers and headmistress, was that it doesn’t even matter that much what you choose to study, as long as you are hard-working and ambitious and do well in your chosen course of study.

After a brief introduction from all the panelists, they went on to discuss their experiences in school, and the factors that weighed in on the process of deciding on a career path. Some questions addressed to them by the moderators, Marie and Lee Anne, were “What was your ambition when you were young?”, “What is the most important career advice that you ever received?”, “How has your education shaped who you are today?”, and even “Did you ever get into trouble at school?”

The panelists discussed their experiences using very personal and powerful stories, and the girls found it easy to relate to them and quickly joined the discussion by coming on stage and asking questions. We were all so pleased to see how comfortable they felt in the presence of the guests, and how confident they spoke on the microphone! Their questions, however, revealed the lack of information concerning higher education and professional development, but also showed the girls’ ambition and desire to do service to the communities. Many of the questions were about opportunities to do social work or help out a certain sector of the society; a lot of students also asked about life in college, and the type of education offered at higher levels; while others simply sought advice on how to overcome the nervous feelings they get before exams, or how to better balance all the subjects they are interested in.

The principal conclusions that emerged from the discussion concerned the importance of continuing one’s education, and of following one’s passion and drive. The panelists also emphasized the idea that it’s okay to not know exactly what you want to do at this age, but that this confusion should not prevent them from following through with their education.

It was so encouraging to see the girls break out of their shyness and interact with these young professionals, and hearing their passionate questions, and the determination in their voice, I felt so immensely proud of them. And then I look over to the back and my students are standing behind the tripod, with headphones on, filming the entire event. Mounika, the camera operator, catches my glance and gives me a smile and a thumbs-up. Tell me, how can I not be proud?

Thank you once again to the wonderful Google panelists, Marie, Lee Anne, Basanth, Ipshita and Archie! Thank you for your time, your passion and your warmth- your words have left a mark, in more ways than one.

For photos of the event, check out our Flickr page and Lee Anne’s pictures as well!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxGy85_TEq8&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

28
Oct

0

Daily Updates, Photo Stories, Student Writing

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Islam and India: Student writings on world faiths and recent floods

Mosque

The boys pose in front of their mosque nearest their boarding school

I asked the students to write about a special memory they had. Munna, a student whose group project was on religion, misinterpreted the assignment and wrote to me: Religion is like memory (for) anyone who cannot see with his eyes, he sees with his mind.

Temple

A temple near The Modern Story's fellows' apartment in Abids

When asked, ‘If there was one thing you would change about the world,’ Krrish responded: I would convert the whole world to Islam. I asked him what he would do if he met someone who believed in a different religion and did not want to be converted. He said, ‘I would respect him. But I would tell him how he was living was wrong.’ In response, Krrish will be exploring how the diversity of religions in India relates to him by working on fictional conversations, a dialogue, that he would imagine to take place between himself and people of different faiths that he meets. His responses reminded me a lot of the delicate discussions I took part in with World Faith in Lebanon following the 2006 war. Arbani, an energetic small 9th grader, will be exploring religion through a graphic novel he is working on. He is a visually oriented student who cannot wait to draw and is always sketching something in his notebook. He will be exploring religious tensions in his community, Hyderabad, and India through a series of illustrated stories that I hope to be posting soon.

Near APRS Boys boarding school in Nalgonda outside Hyderabad, India

A Hindu temple near the Muslim APRS Boys school

Another student, Khasim, wrote a poem about the afternoon sunlight near the mosque where he prays:

Afternoon comes
it goes
to the river to ride on buffaloes
to the big animals
and enjoys them all
This way the afternoon, like a crow, enjoys the whole day.

Both religion and issues related to health including dengue, malaria and the recent floods seem to be issues that concern the students on a daily basis. Nadeem, for example, wrote about those Indians that have had to deal with the heavy rains this summer:

Mud in our homes
Mud in our beds
Mud in our bones
Where do we eat.
Where do we sleep.

Sajjid, a student that has a lot of experience with cameras and has been patiently waiting his turn to show his skills, wrote the following about the floods in Andhra Pasha.

There is a man
in the water
in the (midst) of his poverty
floating on the flood
There is a man
by the water
eating all the money.

Osmania Hospital in Hyderabad, India

One theme students will be exploring this semester is health. This is a photo of one of Hyderabad's most famous hospitals: Osmania

Arshan had one of the most poignant insights into the crossroads between religion and the floods in Andhra Pasha in his letter to the Chief Minister:

“Look at how the people are before the flood. Look at how they collect money to help. People go to the Mosque, the Temple, the Church and they all come away with money to give to people of the flood.”