Mission: Beyondmedia Education’s mission is to facilitate media education and access with women and girls in grassroots organizations most in need of media support because of financial, social, political and/or geographical isolation. We partner with social activist organizations to collaboratively produce media arts (videos, web sites, photographic exhibitions), print materials (handbooks, graphic arts, promotional literature), and outreach campaigns; and we train under-served and under-represented women and girls through media empowerment workshops to create and distribute their own media, giving voice to their leadership in the world. Beyondmedia Education works across boundaries of age, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ability, gender and sexual orientation to produce inclusive programs. We actively expand and complicate our organizational identity through diverse partnerships with a broad spectrum of organizations, artists and activists.
Beyondmedia Education coordinated and facilitated a workshop at Roosevelt University to allow youth to communicate with community advocates about their experience and perspectives on violence in their schools, homes, and neighborhoods throughout Chicago. The experience was life changing for the youth and the adults. The workshop brought about how important it is for youth to speak up and have a voice about the issues in their communities. This is one example of the various issues Beyondmedia Education supports by creating a safe space for youth, women and communities to make a difference by having a voice through media.
Beyondmedia is an amazing organization. Basically, BME partners with other organizations (local, women-centered, GLBTQ, etc. groups) to teach them how to conceptualize a video project from storyboard to editing. Some of these projects include making a library of short films -- like the Chain of Change project, where young women talk back about domestic and relationship abuse -- and longer projects -- like HIV; Hey's It's Viral! or Don't Media Me.
