September 1 - December 17, 2000

A collaboration between Horizons Unlimited and La Casa de los Jovenes, Mission Voices Year-Round provided students with an open forum to investigate issues of cultural identity, community, personal responsibility and the environment. Mayor Brown said of Mission Voices, "A model of innovation, it represents the best in what a community with a common vision can accomplish." A year round program as of January 1999, Mission Voices provides training in artistic media production and leadership skills for youth. Through media-based projects with themes that connect self awareness, community awareness and social responsibility, youth will interact with a broad section of the neighborhood, from community leaders to civic officials to graphic and multi-media artists who now comprise a large part of Southern Exposure's neighborhood. The students also learn marketable production skills and participate in life skills workshops ranging from community activism to conflict mediation and peer mentoring. Upon completion of the program, students will have sufficient training to be hired as youth leaders by participating organizations, seek future employment in a media field, or utilize their portfolios in college applications. In the spring of 2001, Southern Exposure's Mission Voices Year Round program launched a new ten-week turn-tabling project at Horizons Unlimited. Youth gathered field recordings, created original music, wrote lyrics and learned sequencing, sampling, and mixing skills to create their own sounds compositions resulting in a fourteen-track CD compilation.