www.mystorymedia.org

And here is the wonderful media rich website- it looks great and is full of really interesting stories by young people in Bristol and the South West. Check it out and Enjoy.

Well done Melvyn for getting it all up and running in time as well.

Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Bristol attend My Story Launch and Visit AYA Youth Bus

The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Bristol visited the AYA Youth Bus at Shirehampton Golf Club and met the young people involved in the youth-led My Story project, which was launched on Friday 30th January.

The young people's stories went online on the media rich, lucsious website at: www.mystorymedia.org

Young people were presented by certificates of achievement by the Lord Mayor. Friends and family also watched some of the stories created by the young people. The young people received bright goodie bags, with My Story hoodies!!



Rebecca Quansah from MediaBox was also there, as were Sas Bonser and Emma from South West Screen.

A big thanks to all the tutors who made the project possible- who I forgot to say how great they all were: Jessie Currie, Ina Hume; Megan Lynas, Tom Stubbs; Melvyn Ternan and Steven Tunn.

And big thanks to Emma Twyford and Ian Anderson at Avon Youth Association and Siayma Ahmed and Junice Buddington at Black Carers Project, and Deborah Holt who supported our involvement with the Roma.

Izzy and Huria's Story

Today Huria and me are here to edit a piece of work, an audio, that we recorded couple of weeks ago. It is about our story; were
talking about our family. It was mainly about my grandmother, she passed away July 2006 the reason we decided to talk about our grandmother was because we used to care for her as she was physically ill. She was diagnosed with diabetes, and she had a stoke where she was paralysed one side of her body. Which lead to, not speaking or couldn’t walk, that was the main reason we looked after her and because she wasn’t capable of doing anything herself.

It was great fun working together on this project. We didn’t only talk about my grandmother we also talked about all the things we went through when we first moved from Africa, Somali and came to Europe. We had a bad experience throughout life experiences. We had to go through so many awful things, such as lost both our grandparents; we never had enough money to support ourselves, my mom went through a divorce. It was a lot to handle especially when you’re at such young age. The reason I think we are ourselves, today is because we have experienced a lot and we’ve stop blaming ourselves for what happened, and now we finally learnt how to move on.
Of course it’s hard when you lose someone special in life, but the hardest part for us was because we looked after her everyday and is so hard to let go.

Izzy

Merry Christmas from Southmead and Brentry....

The girls on the youth management team have decided to get out and about and check out the lights of North Bristol. Here are some they will be going back to, to find out what motivates those who like to light up their houses and communities.....

Black Young Carers- Win Award and Meet the Mayor!!

Black Young Carers Youth Club won the Group Award for Building a Better Bristol. The young carers met the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Bristol. And ate lots of scones...

My Story- MediaBox Funding

Yippeee!!! We got some funding from MediaBox (First Light Movies), which is under the Department of Children and Families. We will be working with three groups of young people in Bristol and North Somerset. These groups are the Black Young Carers in partnership with Black Carers Project, young people from Shirehampton in partnership with Avon Youth Association Youth Bus and some Young Roma. We are very excited about the project as it will give these young people an opportunity to learn some new media skills and create some audio-visual photostories about their lives. The final photostories will eventually be shared on the larger Our Stories website (www.ourstories.org).

There will also be opportunities for other young people from around the world to share their stories with these young people. Links to past Vanishing Rites trainings from Uganda, Borneo, Kenya will also be uploaded soon.

The young people will update this blog themselves as part of the ongoing evaluation of the project. They will also be setting up their own website.

Contact Ina (ina@vanishingrites.com) for further information about the My Story project, and if you are interested in sharing your stories with the young people.