Who We Are

Organizations Involved with YAM L.A.

YAM is a partnership of community-based organizations that are committed to providing teens and young adults in Los Angeles County with free access to high quality, technology-intensive media arts, visual and music education. The organizations share in common a desire to encourage youth to use and understand digital technologies as vehicles for communication.

• A Place Called Home

A Place Called Home provides at-risk youth with a secure, positive family environment where they can regain hope and belief, earn trust and self-respect and learn skills to lead to a productive lifestyle free of the gangs, drugs and poverty that surround them. We help inner city youth find their dreams through educational enrichment.

• All Peoples Christian Center

All Peoples Christian Center is a private nonprofit, non-sectarian, multi-cultural, multi-service agency located at 822 East 20th Street in Los Angeles. We first began as a church, chartered in May of 1946 by Dan Genung and his wife Frances.

• Blazers

Founded in 1969, “The Blazers” began as a youth basketball program providing basketball instruction, academic tutoring, and mentoring for 10 young men from West and Central Los Angeles. From its modest beginnings in a local park, “The Blazers” evolved into a league of six teams with 70 members – boys and girls, ages 7 to 17 – who competed across the country and won national titles. In 1994, the program expanded its vision to include an after school program and opened “The Blazers Safe Haven” for learning.

• Bresee Foundation

The Bresee Foundation is a nonprofit community center that is a source of faith, hope and service to low-income youth, adults and families in central Los Angeles. We serve nearly 2,000 individuals annually, primarily at-risk youth from the Mid-Wilshire, Koreatown, Pico Union, and Westlake neighborhoods (90004, 90020, 90057).

• CalArts Community Arts Partnership (CAP)

The CalArts Community Arts Partnership (CAP), a program of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), links the Institute and the diverse communities of Los Angeles County through free, after-school and school-based arts programs for youth. CAP provides the youth in these communities challenging learning environments for artistic experimentation and creates access to higher education. Through these CalArts faculty-mentored programs, CAP provides CalArts students the opportunity to teach, to redefine their artistic abilities and to refine the role of artists, arts education, and the arts in society.

• Digital Dove at Covenant House

Digital Dove started in early 2004 with a seed grant from HBO Films.  Working together, HBO and Covenant House staff  outlined the programs goals, created a core curriculum and implemented a pilot workshop at Covenant House Los Angeles.

To date the workshops have produced more than a dozen original short films, which have screened to great enthusiasm in various film festivals, including the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Bresee Foundation Youth Film Festival.

• Echo Park Film Center

Echo Park Film Center is a non-profit media arts organization located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. We provide equal and affordable access to film/video education and resources.

• Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California

Was founded to create a more humane and democratic society by responding to the needs and problems of disenfranchised people through leadership development and educational programs based on Popular Education methodology. Specifically our goal is to organize and educate immigrants concerned with solving problems in their own communities.

• Little Tokyo Service Center

Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) aims to meet the critical needs of community through culturally sensitive social services. LTSC’s Community Technology department addresses the digital divide by providing technology education and access to underserved youth, seniors, families and adults through offering a wide range of computer-based learning opportunities, including basic computer skills, website development and digital video and media production.

• Long Beach YMCA Youth Institute

The Youth Institute a nationally recognized program of the YMCA of Greater Long Beach Community Development branch, it is a year-round program that uses technology as an integral mechanism for promoting positive youth development and enhancing the academic success and career readiness of low-income, culturally diverse urban high school youth.

Website address: www.lbymcayi.org and www.changeagentproductions.org

• St. Francis Center

St. Francis Center provides a range of services to thousands of homeless and near homeless adults and children. We are a primary source of food and nutrition for people who are hungry. We are the only social service agency of our type in these neighborhoods and we need you in order to help this community!

• Urban Oasis Film Academy

To empower underrepresented youth of Los Angeles by providing them with the tools, knowledge and mentoring required to express themselves in the film medium. Giving voice to their stories while awakening the possibility of employment in the film industry, The Urban Oasis Film Academy hopes to help close the gap, or digital divide, between those with the resources for media literacy, and those without.

• Venice Arts

Venice Arts’ mission is to ignite youths’ imagination, mentor their creativity, and expand their sense of possibility through high quality, accessible media–based arts education programs. Venice Arts also serves as a catalyst for people of all ages, living in low–income or underrepresented communities, to create and share personal and community stories through photography, film, and multi–media.

• Youth Speak Collective

Youth Speak Collective (YSC), a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization, is a youth-driven initiative empowering low-income communities in the Northeast San Fernando Valley with the skills necessary to pursue higher education and create strong communities.

The organization was founded based on an understanding that students were disengaged from their community and schools, which resulted in an epidemic of high-school dropouts and community-wide dis-empowerment.

• LA-Artist.com

• Mobile Mural Lab

The Mobile Mural Lab (MML) is a mobile art space that delivers a variety of contemporary and traditional mural making services.  The MML serves as a public art project fostering a common ground for people to engage in dialogue and creatively express themselves within the public realm. The vehicle is outfitted for research, education, and production of temporary/permanent hand painted wall murals and signs.