CHALK - COMMUNITIES IN HARMONY ADVOCATING FOR LEARNING AND KIDS

San Francisco, California
Adolescence can be a difficult time, full of doubt, questions, and anxiety. Young people often cannot discuss personal problems with a parent, or even with a friend. Where can they go to find support and answers to questions concerning issues such as AIDS awareness, drug and alcohol abuse, gang violence, eating disorders, sexual identity, and suicide prevention? How does a lone teen discuss a troubling relationship, navigate the job market, or find out where to get free tutoring? Conversation, encouragement, and an online database of resources are available through CHALK's Youthline, a toll-free phone service, providing confidential peer-support and information of all kinds to callers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Youthline listener, Ruth Barajas, role-plays a "support" telephone call with a student during a community outreach event at Bayview-Hunters Point, a poor neighborhood in San Francisco. Silver dye bleach print © Lauren Greenfield 1999	Listener Aya Cash, age 17, takes a support call from an anonymous youth during her shift at Youthline Silver dye bleach print © Lauren Greenfield 1999

Staffed by teens and young adults trained in social work and communication skills, Youthline directs callers to resources equipped to deal with health and life-threatening concerns, listen to problems, and even provides job and movie listings and horoscopes. Youth-to-youth communication is a central premise of the program, but supervisors are always on hand to talk young listeners through the most desperate calls. By paying its listeners, this peer counseling and information hotline also serves as an innovative employment program for urban youth. Youthline provides valuable job experiences for Bay Area teens and young adults while giving them an active, beneficial role in their community as organizers, educators, mentors, and counselors.

Photographer Lauren Greenfield, a photojournalist and premier interpreter of American youth culture, is known for building rapport with her young subjects. Her images show Ruth Barajas, from Youthline, role playing a "support" telephone call with a student during a community outreach event and Aya Cash, a Youthline listener taking a call during her shift. Youthline listeners posing for a souvenir group portrait are also pictured.

Interviewer George King, who trained as a documentary filmmaker, is a writer and producer of nonfiction projects in theater, film, television, and radio. His interviews present the voices of young people who work at the organization, giving their perspectives on their own experience and the needs of youth in their area, and discussing how CHALK is equipped to meet those needs. quotation from an interview

http://www.creativephotography.org    This page last updated September 24, 2000.   oncenter@ccp.arizona.edu