Education & Career Development programs provide youth with academic tutoring and homework assistance, job development and college prep services during after-school hours. Both youth and adults are offered computer access and training as well as arts and multimedia production workshops in our 14-station CyberCafé open access lab and 28-station CyberHood computer training center.
What I do:
My main job is to teach filmmaking and story-telling to middle and
high school students in the community center’s CyberHood computer
lab. One focus of the program Is to teach fundamental professional
skills on video camcorders, lighting, audio recording and editing.
This gives a young person a firm foundation if she or he decides to
study film further in college or to pursue a job in the industry.
Another focus is how to tell a story because if your film doesn’t
tell a compelling story then no one is going to watch your piece.
Finally, we teach how to use digital filmmaking as a tool for social
change in our community; we do this both in after school workshops
and in our annual film contest for social justice in which we award
young people with digital video camcorders which they can use as a
weapon for social change in their communities. I also outreach our
program to other nonprofits in the area as well as at our local schools;
currently I teach two film classes at Belmont High School.
Why I am here:
I spent over 20 years working for various Hollywood studios. My main
paying job was to help their main stream movies tell bettter stories
by working on the scripts before they went into production. Over the
years I became disenchanted the Hollywood product; the films were
telling the same old tired stories but now they were using digital
technology to make it look better and produce it cheaper. I volunteered
for a short time at a Hollywood youth shelter and could not help but
notice how happy the employees were when they came to work. I questioned
why I was so miserable in my job and decided to try working at a nonprofit.
I volunteered to teach a filmmaking class at Bresee and they eventually
hired me as a full time staff member. The experience has transformed
my life, giving me a new mission and purpose, and I hope in my own
way that I have transformed Bresee a bit as well.
What I enjoy about what I do:
I enjoy working with a variety of people every day at our community
center, both the staff and the people who walk through our doors to
seek our services. I enjoy helping people, from senior citizens who
want to learn how to make a film to tutoring a middle school student
in math. I enjoy the challenge of being flexible in adapting to almost
anything that can come my way, because no day is ever the same at
the Bresee Community Center.
