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Latino Legacy The mission the LATINO LEGACY Project is to empower Latino youth and families to honor their cultural heritage and to play an active role in shaping their future by expressing their history, cultural perspectives and insights through the power of digital media. The Latino Legacy Project seeks to encourage greater understanding and respect of Latino values among Americans, and to ensure that Latinos have a greater “voice” in the media of the Information Age. A cornerstone of the Latino Legacy Project is the production of a rich tapestry of life stories which engage the younger generation in a quest to document the wisdom and experience of the older generation, revealing their struggles, sacrifices, character values and lessons, which inspire youth to address their own challenges. One of the goals of the Project is to encourage Latino youth to overcome the challenges they face in school and life, in order to overcome the California high school dropout crisis which these young people are disproportionately affected by. Since 2005, the Latino Legacy Project has worked with hundreds of participants in the Central Valley. Partners including the Digital Clubhouse Network and the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation share the vision to build Latino Legacy into a statewide project.

Hmong Voices The HMONG VOICES Project started as a result of a tragic series of Hmong teen suicides in Fresno between 1998 and 2001. The Hmong are an ethnic group from the highlands of Laos who were trained by the CIA to repel communism in Southeast Asia during the period surrounding the Vietnam War. Following the communist takeover of the Laotian government, the Hmong became refugees and fled in mass, many settling in California’s central San Joaquin Valley. When Hmong leaders gathered together to discuss the teen suicide epidemic, they concluded that Hmong youth were suffering from a dangerous disconnect. They were trapped somewhere between the American and Hmong cultures, not able to negotiate an identity, never quite fitting in to either category and struggling for acceptance with both groups. Both the Hmong youth and the general community needed a better understanding of who the Hmong really are… Since 2004, a variety of partners have made it possible to develop the Hmong Voices Project, which brings together Hmong youth and elders to record oral histories and create digital stories documenting the history of the Secret War in Laos, the Thai refugee camps, immigration to the Central Valley, and integration into American life. Their stories have been shared at community screenings, conferences, and educational seminars throughout California,Massachusetts , Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Today the Hmong Voices project continues in the Central Valley, where we hope to establish a national project website which will included own loadable digital storytelling curriculum and opportunities for national participation and recognition.

Stories of Service The Stories of Service project is an exciting intergenerational program that teaches young people valuable 21st century job skills and the importance of service to community, volunteerism, and civic engagement. Working with adult mentors, youth producers interview veterans for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, and use computers to combine the veteran's words with images and music, creating short digital stories that are shared with schools, libraries and museums, including the Smithsonian Institute, and with a global audience over the Internet Stories of Service brings together the power of technology and youth volunteerism to record, preserve and share our historical legacy, passing on priceless lessons about courage, sacrifice and service to future generations. Stories of Service was first launched in the Central Valley during summer 2003. Since that time, we have assisted local Stories of Service program sites to launch across the state of California (10 sites), Michigan, and Minnesota. The Digital Clubhouse Network has made the program available to educators and youth across the country via a full-scale national roll-out, and sample digital stories and free downloadable curriculum can be viewed via the national website at www.stories-of-service.org.

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