Young People Are Using Musical Theater to Heal Their Trauma — and It’s Working

On the drive home from Priya Shah’s first Storycatchers musical, she pulled over. She was teary-eyed and emotionally moved by the musical she had just watched.
Shah, who now serves as the executive director of Storycatchers, had just seen a musical at the Illinois Youth Center, a juvenile facility in Warrenville, Illinois. She watched girls tell stories of sexual abuse, battery and neglect. She also saw stories of hope and resilience.
“It struck me that these characters I had just watched struggle, joke, grieve and triumph on stage, that they’re not just characters,” she told NationSwell. “They’re based on real people with real stories.”
Shah left a corporate career to work with those girls and similar young people at Storycatchers Theatre
Storycatchers Theatre — also known as Storycatchers — is a nonprofit musical theater group that works with justice-involved youth in Chicago. Through programming both inside and outside of the justice centers, children and young adults turn their life stories into musicals.
The young actors and actresses perform for a wide variety of audience members, including elementary school students, community members, judges, legislators and police officers. Last year, the nonprofit worked with 228 young people and hosted 127 performances inside and outside of juvenile detention centers, for over 5,000 audience members. 
“It’s kind of a dual-purpose program, these young people have a place to tell their story, to be heard, to be validated, to find coping mechanisms in order to move on from their trauma,” Tory Davidson, Storycatchers’ community engagement manager, told NationSwell. “But then also we organizationally find platforms for young people’s voices to be heard and for them to inform people of power.”
Storycatchers has two programs: one that engages 13- to 18-year-olds inside three juvenile detention centers in or near Chicago, and another program called Changing Voices, which works with young people who are between the ages of 17 and 24 and are justice-involved, typically on parole, probation or post-release.  
Changing Voices employs 21 young adults for 30 hours a week at Chicago’s minimum wage. Through that, they receive wraparound services, such as resume building, conflict management, financial literacy and job acquisition. They work with case managers and artist educators, who help them develop the musicals. A single day may start with a morning workshop on how to secure a job interview to an afternoon choreography rehearsal to a lesson on keeping calm in moments of crisis. 
A cohort of four or five people work together to write their individual stories, create a group script, add music to the script, practice and then perform the musicals. Individuals typically stay in the program for about eight months, but some stay longer.
The Storycatchers team believes that trauma is the core reason that individuals end up in the justice system. Researchers have found a link between crime and unresolved trauma. So by telling and performing their story, they learn from the trauma and overcome it, said Shah.
“We believe that if we give diversion programming and arts programming and mental health support … it drastically changes the trajectory of their life because they understand what the actions are and what the consequences are,” she said.
The goal is to leave Storycatchers prepared for success, which may mean enrolling in higher education, landing a steady job or rekindling family bonds. Each story of success is different, said Shah. 
For Quincy, success means pursuing a degree in theater. “I love acting, and I’m going to try and pursue it,” he said. Quincy, 19, learned about Storycatchers after his own encounter with the justice system. He had grown up watching Disney Channel, so acting was always a passion. He said Storycatchers felt like a great opportunity to prepare for a job and gain training as an actor. So Quincy applied, interviewed, auditioned and was accepted to the Changing Voices program.
A year and a half later, he’s performed close to a hundred shows and worked with dozens of fellow actors and actresses. 
“We are all human beings, so we’re all going to make mistakes,” Quincy told NationSwell. “It’s called life experience, so you just have to live through it and think beyond the point where you shouldn’t have made that decision.”
Thanks to Storycatchers, Quincy has overcome trauma and created a foundation for a career. 
For another Storycatchers actor, it meant accepting male role models. Shah shared the story of a young man who had been abandoned by his father. The actor wrote a story about his dad leaving his home and never coming back.
The life event led to a lot of anger and challenges, but by writing and performing his trauma, he worked through it.
“We saw him overcome [his trauma] and have a positive relationship with male role models in his life,” Shah said.
The playwrights, writing about their own experiences, perform in their shows but never as themselves. They assume the role of their mothers, their grandfathers, a police officer or friend, for example. The idea is for them to experience their own situations from a new perspective.
“So by role-playing, you’re having people imagine a world that’s different from what they’d imagined before,” Shah said. “From the time they start writing their stories, to the time they perform it … they’re validating their stories.”

storycatchers theatre
A young actor rehearses for a performance with a Storycatchers actor-educator.

Storycatchers began performing life stories in 1984 when Meade Palidofsky founded the organization. She started working with young people across Chicago to transform their personal stories into musicals. 
She ended up workshopping and creating a show in one of Chicago’s juvenile detention centers. After the performance and workshop were over, the juveniles were aching to start their next musical, Davidson said. Their eagerness led Palidofsky to continue to work with justice-involved individuals. In 2016, Storycatchers decided to focus solely with justice-involved youth.
Twenty-nine years later, the program is still strong. The leaders at Storycatchers hope to deepen their impact in Chicago by expanding its outreach. 
Storycatchers currently has plenty of anecdotal stories pointing to their success, but there isn’t evidence-based research to support their work — yet. The University of Chicago Urban Labs is currently looking at Storycatchers’ rates of recidivism and employment among its graduates to track their success. That data will be released in 2022. 
“We believe in strong collaboration. We believe in strong relationships,” Shah said. “And a strong ecosystem to be able to provide an equitable platform for our youth.”
More: The Broadway Theater Company Giving Troubled Teens a Second Act
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Illinois Youth Center is a juvenile detention center. It is a juvenile facility. Storycatchers Theatre also realigned its mission in 2016, not 1990. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.

Watch Our Q&A with City Year

The cofounders of City Year, a nonprofit that serves communities by bridging the divide between what schools and teachers can offer and what students actually need, have big plans for growth.
“We currently serve around 150,000 students,” says Michael Brown, City Year CEO, explaining that his goals include doubling the percentage of students on track to graduate, reaching a majority of students deemed as off track and expanding to new cities.
“We want to serve 850,000 students over the next 10 years, and we’ll need a corps of over 10,000 City Year AmeriCorps members to do it.”
As part of a series of live Google Hangouts On Air featuring service opportunities, NationSwell interviewed Brown and his cofounder, Alan Khazei, along with a current corps member and a City Year alumnus. 
While City Year is creating thousands of opportunities to serve, this country lacks the expectation of service — something the organization hopes to address. Like the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute, which is looking to mobilize a million young people to serve, City Year envisions a future in which “the most commonly-asked question of an 18-year-old will be, ‘Where will you do your service year?’”
“It’s so important for young people to serve because it really connects us to the greater world,” says Lan Truong, a City Year corps member based in Boston, explaining that service connects us to something bigger than ourselves. “We get to make our country better and make our people better.”
“A year of service changes you,” adds Marissa Rodriguez, who went from City Year to become the Training & Operations Manager at Boston Scholar Athletes (which works to improve academic performance through sports). “For us to be able to sort of find the way that we can continue to make an impact is so key and will continue to grow the opportunity that a year of service provides.”
Khazei says that recapturing the service ethic in America would change our country in profound ways, adding that the Greatest Generation was that way because they served together. “If we had a year of service as a common expectation, every generation would become the Greatest Generation,” he says.
Watch the video above, then click the Take Action button to learn how you can join NationSwell and The Franklin Project to spread the word on service year opportunities, and make sure to tweet your thoughts and questions using the #serviceyear hashtag.
 

3 Newcomers That Are Finding a Better Way to Feed the World

While young people often have the reputation of being picky eaters and filling their plates with only chicken nuggets and French fries, that’s hardly applicable to all teens and twenty-somethings. In fact, in 2014, many youth are working to solve the crucial problems of our food system — including childhood obesity, food deserts and high prices.
Enter Food Tank, a think tank that’s working to build a global community for healthy eaters. It has set its sights on young people who are developing and employing local ideas that can, and already are, having a widespread impact where it really matters. Here, three foodies that make Food Tank — and us — excited about the (edible) future.
Can you imagine having an online cooking show and publishing a cookbook all before you turned 15? That’s exactly what Remmi Smith did — and that’s not all the Tulsa, Okla. resident is doing to inspire her fellow teens to cook nutritious meals. She’s also a student health ambassador for Sodexo, a food service company, and is a member of Future Chefs, which helps urban teens find work in the restaurant industry after graduation.
Tyson Gersh, 25, is playing the long game with Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI), a nonprofit organization he founded that works directly with communities to convert empty lots into working produce farms. With an aim to “promote education, sustainability and community,” as its website says, MUFI’s 2,500 volunteers are creating a new generation of self-sufficient, local food producers, while also making people more aware of the origins of their food.
We all know that kids love sweets, and it’s okay to indulge them once in a while. At the young age of 13, Nicky Bronner wasn’t about to lay down when his parents tried to deprive him the processed junk foods he loved. So he and his father started Unreal Foods, a brand of sweets made from sustainable palm oil, grass-fed dairy and traceable cocoa and excluding corn syrup, GMOs and preservatives. Today, at 17, Nicky’s candy is now available at big chains like Target and Kroger, putting healthier snacking delights into mouths all over the U.S.
Read about the other innovators at EcoWatch.
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Saved if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?

Watch: How One Man is Saving His Community, One Child at a Time

Some people experience bad things, leading them towards a life of violence and crime. But with others, tough situations encourage them to help others.
Billy Lamar Brooks Sr., fortunately, belongs to the second group.
Brooks, a former Black Panther member, has experienced many of life’s challenges as a black man living in North Lawndale, Illinois, a neighborhood just outside of Chicago. As a young boy, he experienced racism from Chicago police, lost his son — Billy Lamar Brooks, Jr. — to murder right before Father’s Day in 1991, and has seen how poverty affected his hometown. Despite all this, Brooks continues to help his community the best way he can: By impacting the lives of young people in his neighborhood.
Currently, Brooks serves as the Director of YouthLab@1512 at the Better Boys Foundation (BBF), where he works with kids ages of 13 to 18 throughout the year. “I love them [students]. That’s why I’m here. I enjoy doing what I do,” he said. “It’s my profession. It’s my career. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
While he helps his students with their academic and prevocational goals at BBF, he is also out on the streets every day, trying to teach the neighborhood’s kids the value of their choices. “There are times we have to go out there and hunt them down, and chase them, berate them, but it’s all out of love.”
In The Atlantic‘s video, republished by Upworthy, he says, “It’s about choice, when I tell young people this today. One does not have to come from a middle class, two parent household to be successful in life.”
MORE: What Can Former Gang Members Teach Psychology Students?

SXSW: NationSwell on the Rise of Online Youth Activists

On the final day of SXSW Interactive (that stands for South by Southwest for the uninitiated), two inspiring student activists joined Greg Behrman, Founder and CEO of NationSwell, and Ronnie Cho, the former Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, to discuss how they’ve successfully used technology to address national challenges.
Simone Bernstein, a senior at St. Bonaventure University in New York, said her frustration from the lack of information for teenagers who wanted to volunteer in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, led her to work with her brother to start a website called St. Louis Volunteen. This later grew into VolunTEEN Nation, a national organization that lists volunteer opportunities for teens while also encouraging organizations to recognize the potential of younger volunteers.
“So many kids wanted to volunteer but there were very few places they could go to find those opportunities,” she said. “A few months after we launched St. Louis Volunteen, we got hundreds then thousands of emails from people who wanted to volunteer in their own cities.”
Bernstein wakes up at 6:30 every morning, runs three miles, then spends six hours each day working on VolunTEEN Nation — all of this on top of her academic work. She says she is grateful for Skype, Twitter, and other online tools that allow her to lead the national team, including 240 ambassadors across the country.
High school senior Charles Orgbon III talked about his work founding and running Greening Forward. The has its roots in a school project that had him picking up litter around the Mill Creek High School campus in Hoschton, Georgia. Initially, his Earth Savers Club only had three members, but the Internet provided Orgbon with a power platform to rally student action. Using a blog called Recycling Education, he shared posts on environmental issues with, as he describes it, “anyone who wanted to listen.”
Describing the transition that led to Greening Forward, which works to provide a diverse group of young people with the resources they need to protect the environment, Orgbon says that he started thinking toward the end of eighth grade about how he might use technology to advance the impact he could have.
“Let’s do more than just post on a website. Let’s build some resources and support tools to help young people build similar projects like the Earth Savers Club in their own communities,” he said.
The audience, many of them working professionals in their 20s and 30s, laughed when Orgbon defined a young person as someone under the age of 25.
This old 26 year old tweeting in the corner captured some other memorable moments from the conversation:

Cho moderated the afternoon session. While serving as President Obama’s liaison to Young Americans and writing the White House’s For the Win blog (which focused on the remarkable initiatives young Americans advance in their own communities) Cho came across many stories of student innovation. He talked about the importance of a platform to “highlight interesting, effective, impactful work” or Americans across the country.
This is exactly where NationSwell comes in, Behrman said, talking about the website’s model of telling stories about individuals making an impact and mobilizing support around innovators like Ben Simon of the Food Recovery Network. He then shared a video outlining the impact of its call to action.
MORE: How Much Food Could Be Rescued if College Dining Halls Saved Their Leftovers?
“The founding impetus is really these guys, people throughout our country who are doing amazing things, and sometimes they’re overlooked and sometimes people who are interested may not know about them, so we want to be a platform for them, a source for their stories,” Behrman said.
Then panel went on to explore the way tools from social media to smart phones have helped Bernstein, Orgbon, and so many student activists advance their causes and achieve national impact. The audience posed questions ranging from the distinction between activism and service to the role of school curriculum in encouraging volunteering. The conversation itself seemed likely to inspire not only more stories about student innovators who have leveraged technology to address national challenges, but strong support for them as well.