The mission of Youth in Focus is to empower youth, through photography, to experience their world in new ways and to make positive choices for their lives. Youth in Focus puts cameras in the hands of youth and places them in challenging environments surrounded by high-quality, talented teachers, nurturing adult volunteer mentors, and create a strong community of support. Through photography students find their voice, identity, and creativity, and gain new confidence in their worth and abilities.
Mentor
Our volunteer mentors help us to serve over 300 youth every year. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to make positive impacts in the lives of youth, like we do.
Direct Attention We intentionally keep our classes small to facilitate maximum student-adult interaction and relationship building. Youth in Focus creates a healthy, positive place where diverse students feel they belong. Each class is limited to 10 – 13 students with one teaching artist and two to three adult, volunteer mentors.
We place two to three adult, volunteer mentors in each of our classes to assist teaching artists and to build positive relationships with youth. Mentors commit between 45 and 60 hours of their time each quarter, participating in all classes, as well as our quarterly Kick-off event, and End of Quarter Show.
We are seeking mentors with experience working with at-risk youth and experience in a field of photography, as well as being willing to learn and implement our youth development strategies for building a positive community. Each class meets twice weekly from 4:30-7:00pm for a total of 5.5 hours, over 8 weeks. The summer schedule varies each year.
For more information and to apply, please visit: http://www.youthinfocus.org/mentor/.
Teaching Artist
Youth in Focus offers both B&W Darkroom and Digital Photography Classes to youth ages 13-19 throughout the year in eight-week quarters. Additionally we offer a variety of photography partner program and workshop opportunities based on interest and teaching artist expertise. Hours for our quarterly classes and partner programs vary throughout the year. We seek professional teaching artists with ample experience teaching photography to at-risk youth, professionally practicing photography, and writing/implementing a syllabus or lesson plans.
For more information and to apply, please visit: http://www.youthinfocus.org/teaching-artist/
