Youth Pulse: A Program for Youth by Youth

New York, NY, 2000

WBAI Pacifica Radio, a progressive community radio station, collaborated with Global Kids, Inc., a youth advocacy organization focused on developing youth as leaders in their communities, to train youth to create and broadcast radio programs. Diana Mason, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing, and Barbara Glickstein, director of Clinical Services and Community Outreach for the Wellness Center at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, represent WBAI. Carole Artigiani is founder and executive director of Global Kids, Inc. The project goal was to bring a youth perspective and audience to radio in order to promote discussion about local and international issues surronding youth, including their health, development, and welfare.

Other organizations participating as informational resources included the Center of Alcohol and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, a national research and program organization dedicated to reducing the effects of substance abuse. The World Health Organization offered a global perspective, and helped facilitate media outreach.

The organizations worked with a core group of ethnically and economically diverse student reporters/broadcasters attending schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, to produce programs on youth substance abuse as part of WBAI's monthly series, Healthstyles. In addition to the broadcasts, the organizations offered peer education workshops, Youth Pulse minutes—one-minute segments broadcast at various times throughout the day and night—and a Web page.

In 1999, the Chronicle of Philanthropy spotlighted Youth Pulse, and ABC television produced a segment on the project for its Children First program.

Contact Information

Youth Pulse: A Program for Youth by Youth
WBAI-FM
Tel: 212-209-2959

Global Kids, Inc.
Carole Artigiani, Executive Director
Tel: 212-226-0130