Youth Community Informatics is a Library and Information Science and Institute of Museum and Library Services initiative at the University of Illinois. YCI is a collective of graduate students, professors, and youth leaders, that seeks to actively engage youth in their communities to take on the issues that affect them the most. Across Illinois, YCI is creating partnerships in communities through school districts, community organizations and local leaders in an effort to produce solutions through the use of technology-rich activities to the issues they face.
Recent Events, Workshops & Presentations
YCI @ ILA 2009
Fall 2009 DIME Meeting
YCI Summer Academies 2009
Digital Media 101 – Podcasting
AT Promise Scholars – Video Scripting, Storyboarding & Editing
By working within communities located in Chicago, Central and Southeast Illinois, YCI is focused on under-served communities that inhabit some portion of the digital divide. The activities that YCI encourages are those that allow the communities to use the technologies at hand for their benefit and sustainability. We hope that those whom we interact with in these communities will become more involved with the progression of their communities. It is also our hope that universities will utilize their social capital to enhance the communities that they inhabit and in turn produce the scholars of tomorrow.
We are a movement of sorts, tasked with creating the knowledge professionals of the future. By allowing those within under-served communities a chance at regaining the reigns of power through the use of technology, we are creating activities that place them into the core of our participatory democracy. Empowerment is our goal. In this changing Information landscape, communities that are at a disadvantage will be left behind. We believe this cannot and will not happen if universities take an active role in assisting youth in disenfranchised communities and encourage them to take hold of the information technologies that have taken hold of our current existence.
