Interdisciplinary curriculum and media literacy education in Global Action Project

Global Action Project (GAP) is a nonprofit organization in New York City founded in 1991 with the goal of providing media arts programming for youth from low income, new immigrant, and LBGQT+ communities. This paper will focus on GAP’s Youth Breaking Borders (YBB) program, an education and leadership program for new immigrant and refugee youth within the theoretical context of critical media literacy. GAP’s educational approach is self-referred to as “Transformative Media Organizing”, focusing on social justice media production by youth. In 2007, Stephen Charbonneau analyzed a GAP documentary production created within the YBB program. Charbonneau shows criticism of GAP’s approach to auto-ethnography by immigrant youth, arguing that GAP embraces American globalism, a single global youth identity, and a universality of the immigrant youth experience (Charbonneau, 2007). GAP continued its Youth Breaking Borders program up until December of 2020, when they announced the organizations closure. By an analysis of GAP’s more recent short films produced through their Youth Breaking Borders program, this paper gives insight on how GAP’s approach to auto-ethnographic expression may have changed or stayed consistent over the course of the organization’s existence. Their social justice and cosmopolitan framework will be used as a foundation to analyze the effectiveness of their approach- determining whether the final film productions by youth participants meet the organizations “Transformative Media Organizing” curriculum goals. This paper aims to determine how GAP approaches multiple pedagogy within the curriculum and whether the organization’s mission over the years may reflect opportunities to effectively empower or support youth in developing a cosmopolitan, global citizen self-identity.