Gandhi Brigade Launches Teen Pregnancy Awareness Campaign

The Trachtenberg Office attended the launch of the Gandhi Brigade’s "Youth Moving Forward" Campaign in which Latino/a youth address the issue of teen pregnancy. The program was held at the City Place Mall and included introductory presentations by Carlos Pinto of the National Campaign and Susan Cruz of the University of Maryland, as well as the much anticipated debut of the campaign video and poster unveiling.

The Gandhi Brigade is a youth voice project that was started in Silver Spring, Maryland. Inspired by the vision of Mohandas Gandhi to create local peace brigades, the project uses the media arts as a tool for connecting youth to their community and to critical issues in their world. The mission of Gandhi Brigade is to prepare the rising generation to become whole leaders in a broken world. Adults with experience working with youth or media coach teens and young adults how to use video and graphic arts to explore a variety of social justice issues. Since its beginning the Gandhi Brigade has created dozens of social justice media pieces and is recognized in the Washington DC metropolitan area as a leader in the field of youth led social change.

In January 2010, the Gandhi Brigade convened a group of youths and launched a 13-week, youth generated, teen pregnancy prevention video production and graphic design project. For two hours every Friday afternoon through May, Heather Kubo and Hawa Touré from the Gandhi Brigade worked with at-risk teens from the community to produce three posters for print and three 30-second public service announcements (PSAs) for television. The target audiences for the posters and PSAs include Latino parents, youths, and community leaders. Susan Cruz, from the University of Maryland's School of Social Work, is responsible for initiating the project. Recognizing the need for Latino teen pregnancy prevention messages in Montgomery County, Ms. Cruz brought together the Gandhi Brigade and the Latin American Youth Center, located in Washington, DC, as core partners. Together, each of these organizations was responsible for providing the youths with the knowledge and resources necessary to complete the project at hand.

For more information call: (301) 588-1399 or email heather@gandhibrigade.org or visit the Gandhi Bridge on the web at http://www.gandhibrigade.org/.