December 2014

We’re are happy to announce that MAVReC has been awarded the Youth Research for Action grant from the What Kids Can Do organization. We appreciate the recognition and support from WKCD and are honored to be one of thirteen recipients of the award. Additionally, over 50 programs applied for this grant! The other winners range from social justice, environmental sciences, city infrastructure, and family dynamics projects. WKCD is a nonprofit organization that has been aiding youth led research projects for over 13 years.

MAVReC members Clifton, Angel, Sebastian, and Marqus hard at work

Our award winning project is an oral history about police brutality and youth resistance in Chicago. We will produce an interactive website that includes video-recorded interviews and resources, as well as a manual for youth about the laws and policing. As for the money itself, we will be using it for:

Paying interviewees
Training for technology usage
Printing materials
Upgrading the website

An 18 year old west side resident, Sean is here to make a change in the city he grew up in by adding ideas to the discussion about police brutality and protests in Ferguson, New York city, and Cleveland. The current rise in civil unrest in these cities has added to the drive of MAVReC to complete our project of bringing Chicago police brutality to light and to be in solidarity with the movement against police brutality. He is already helping us code our personal narratives (On the screen behind Sean) to find over arching themes that tie our experiences with the police to others experiences in our city, to generate resources to resist police brutality, because being apart of MAVReC means we want the violence against young people of color to stop.