Case Study: National Own Your Story Initiative
Collaborating with three Black communities to create a future-facing narrative and to produce community-based media content that aligns with the desired narrative.
Locations:
Detroit, MI
Newark, NJ
New Orleans, LA
The Client
The TandemEd Own Your Story (OYS) initiative is a national, grassroots movement dedicated to capturing, celebrating and protecting the stories of Black people. The initiative works alongside local Black communities to spark dialogue as each community collectively constructs a forward-facing media campaign that authentically reflects the lives of its people.
The Work
Findlay House Global worked with TandemEd’s National Own Your Story team to provide engagement services in partnership with youth, families, residents, community leaders, local businesses and community-based organizations to capture stories of strength and resilience in order to produce community-driven media campaigns that reflected each community's rich history, highlighted present opportunities, and narrated a brighter future.
The Challenges
Ensuring that community members actively contribute to the decision-making process, at every level, and as much as possible.
Equipping OYS Youth Ambassadors from each community with the skills needed to conduct research and design a media campaign
Collaborating with community vendors to produce authentic graphics and visuals
Our solutions included a number of different service activities including:
writing the curriculum on research and media campaign design for the OYS Fellowship Academy
administering community surveys in partnership with local steering committees and OYS youth ambassadors
creating website landing pages for each local community with campaign information
facilitating a number of community-driven activities in each city, including: steering committee meetings, community surveys, focus groups, media content development workshops, and campaign-related events.
Launching social media campaigns in each city and attracted media attention to amplify the work and contributions of community members throughout the campaign.
Writing four (4) full-length reports.
A unique, community-specific brand identity for each local campaign:
Our team ensured that every opportunity for the community to be a part of the campaigns' decision-making process were maximized so that the resulting media campaigns were truly community-designed.
