http://youtu.be/UZ2yZxqBNs0
It has set up a Culture Works' Power 2 Give campaign.
Click here to donate.
The Dayton Power and Lights Foundation will pay 50 cents for every dollar donated up to $3,219.
Funds will be used to cover instructor costs, editing and other fees for classes of 10 students each at Dayton Early College Academy, Stivers School for the Arts and Yellow Springs High School this spring.
“We are trying to raise enough money to go to all three schools,” WYSO development director Luke Dennis said. “I am hoping that this sense of urgency will help.”
Dennis says it cost about $4,000 to fund the class at one school.
Launched in 2014, Dennis said Dayton Youth Radio lost funding for pilot programs from Dayton Foundation, Virginia W. Kettering Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council, which is now funding another WYSO program.
“We didn’t have a good pipeline for the spring (classes) set up,” he said. “Everybody heard the program last year and they loved it.”
Dayton Youth Radio, an offshoot of the station's Community Voices radio training project, receives about $6,000 in support from Dayton Rotary Foundation, Iddings Foundation, and the Fred and Alice Wallace Charitable Memorial Foundation.
Project coordinator and WYSO host Basim Blunt works with students at Dayton area high schools for eight weeks to produce stories that are aired on WYSO.
“It is really tailored towards teenagers. We get some really honest, open deep stories,” Blunt said. "I have to get them to trust me to go deep."
The program is free to students and schools. Blunt has worked with students at David H. Ponitz Career Technology Center and the Dayton Regional STEM School.
Topics range from why kids were mad about Air Jordan sneakers to an immigrant longing for her grandmother's cooking in Iraq to a father and son who both love hip hop music.
Blunt said upcoming stories include a story about Kylen English, produced by his younger cousin who remembers him fondly.
English died in police custody in 2011. Police say English broke out of a back window of a police cruiser and jumped to his death from the Salem Avenue Bridge.
“It is a beautiful story,” Blunt said. "(Dayton Youth Radio) is good for parents, the community and the kids.”
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