So last year we had Seth Rogen, Jordan Peele from Key & Peele, John Cho has done it a couple times, Max Greenfield from New Girl has done it I think more than a few times now, and then Jack Black, Nasim Pedrad from SNL, Thomas Middleditch from Silicon Valley-oh, and then last year we were really happy to have Yvonne Orji and Natasha Rothwell, who were on Insecure. JC: So that would be for our biggest show, which is our main fundraiser when we select some of our best scripts from the year and then we invite bigger actors to come and act them out. SH: And you guys have had some pretty reputable names do the acting in a lot of circumstances. I’ve worked with other non-profits before, but especially among Young Storytellers volunteers, when you see volunteers meet each other, even if they’ve never met each other before, they’re like, ‘Wow this is so cool!’ We’ve gone through the same process, we understand the magic that happens and it’s kind of like this bonding experience. And I think the volunteers understand that, too, and it kind of creates a sense of family. The attention they’re able to give each kid is super important and it humanizes everyone. That sounds super cheesy, but they’re what makes our program unique and what makes it run. JC: I think it really is because of our amazing volunteers. SH: What do you think it is about the program in general that’s been such a big success? Every time I go to a big show I’m just so impressed with their creativity-it’s awesome. And of course I was biased, I was like, “My writer had a better story.” But yeah, it was great to see the whole class develop over the course of the semester and I was so impressed. The way the program is set up, it’s just so easy and fun and I loved getting to know my writer when I was a mentor, and she really had all the ideas and it was so amazing to see over the course of just ten weeks how much she could develop her ideas and it just came out so effortlessly. JC: We work closely with the teachers of the classrooms wherever we work, so they’re the ones who select students because they know the kids best and they know which ones will benefit the most from a one-on-one mentorship. SH: How are the kids selected in these schools? They started in one school just doing one program a year and now it branched out and it grew and now we’re in 60 schools, mostly in L.A., but we do have a school in San Francisco and three in New York now … Ryan Murphy later got involved through Brad. Those people started in just one school and they’re still involved with Young Storytellers. Jaylene Chung: We’re mostly L.A.-based because a while back, some students at the American Film Institute ( Glee co-creator Brad Falchuk, along with Mikkel Bondensen and Andrew Barrett) noticed that art funding all over the nation was going down, so they wanted to help supplement arts education in public schools-not to replace programs, but to supplement what was already happening, and also to use the skills that they were learning and what their friends were learning and pair that with students who would benefit from that. Sweety High: I know the program has been around for quite some time, but how did it initially come to be? And as an added bonus, scroll to the very bottom to see clips put together by YST students based on Beauty and the Beast! Keep reading for everything you need to know about YST, straight from Jaylene Chung, the Development Manager of the organization. I was in for a surprise when I learned that two of TV‘s biggest innovators are behind this program. The other day I shared how Beauty and the Beastreconnected me to my all-time favorite volunteer experience, Young Storytellers.Īfter revisiting the time in my life when I spent an hour a week for 2.5 months helping a young child bring her very own screenplay to life, I decided to take things a step further and reach out to the organization to get some inside scoop on just how everything at this life-changing place came to be.
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