When youth full of intensity and momentum join forces with leaders who are full of experience and wisdom, the results can be powerful and long-term. Each generation is equipped with men and women who will continue a legacy as every generation stands on the shoulders of those who went on before.
Marc A. Sengstacke, the executive director of the Chicago Defender Charities, has re-established the Chicago Defender Charities Youth Media Program. The program allows high school students to interview top TV/radio personalities and have those interviews aired on TV and radio. In addition, students also write about the interviews and publish them in the Defender.
The program is designed to plant seeds in young African-American students that will help them grow and explore career options. Through this program, high school students will get to see the media environment first hand. They get to meet the top personalities and they get to see what goes on behind the scenes.
On Monday, May 14, 2018, Ar-Raheem Payne and Breanna Bonslater [Providence St. Mel High School students] got a chance to explore and take a tour around ABC 7 studios just before the ABC 7 News Anchor Terrell Brown and Ar-Raheem Payne recorded an exclusive on-camera interview.
Brown graduated from Matoaca High School, a public school in Chesterfield County just south of Richmond, Virginia. While in high school, he founded the school’s television program, which still exists today and is now offered as part of the school’s curriculum. While attending Virginia Commonwealth University, Brown landed a part-time job as weekend morning show producer at WWBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Richmond, Virginia. Brown went on to anchor CBS News show Up to the Minute and CBS Morning News. Through his hard work and achievements, he has now become WLS-Channel 7’s “anchor of the future” on Chicago’s top-rated morning newscast.
During the live interview, Brown stated, “I always had this passion for journalism. I remember in middle school just wanting to work in broadcasting. I started in radio and then I kind of saw this opportunity in high school where they had the cameras and the equipment, but nobody had the idea. I said, hey let’s do a TV show. It started out as a club but then it became such a big hit that it became a class.”
Ar-Raheem Payne, 18, is a senior at Providence St. Mel High School on the West Side of Chicago. Over the past four years, he has been a student ambassador, student-athlete, and mentor. He has also worked for a family-owned business Simply Heating and Cooling Co., as a support and maintenance representative. Payne will be graduating from Providence St. Mel this semester. He will enroll in an engineering apprenticeship at Triton College and then he plans to transfer to UIC to finish his bachelor’s degree.
After the interview was finished, Payne said he was relieved. “I felt a little bit of a relief, it went way better than I expected. Terrell is such a cool personality and person, he’s very relatable and I felt that I achieved something today.”
Breanna Bonslater, 16, is a sophomore at Providence St. Mel. Bonslater has received awards in music, art, and poetry. Breanna aspires to become an author and is very interested in learning new things. From the experience with the Youth Media Program, she will continue her expedition into becoming a journalist. She wrote her observations of the program and interview for the Defender.
“It was really interesting to see everything and seeing how it works. It was fun being here; it felt like everybody worked as a team to hit their deadlines. My plan is to continue to write because I really want to become a journalist, so I will continue to write for anyone (laughs).”
With the Youth Media Program, Sengstacke hopes to carry out the foundation’s mission and help influence young African-American youth to early exposure to their future careers now.
“We want to have a number of radio and TV stations involved, we want to have a lot of schools across the Chicago area, and we’re going to have our students involved. The more that happens, the more students we have…and we can provide the African American youth with the exposure that they need.”
Providence St. Mel’s journalism teacher Brian Ward has been a part of this journey with Payne and Bonslater every step of the way from educating, imparting knowledge, having them think for themselves, and exploring ideas.
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