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Siemens, a global leader in green technologies and sustainable infrastructure, has agreed to fund a one-hour broadcast, education, and community outreach project, Growing Greener Schools, to be produced by the Media & Policy Center Foundation and distributed to PBS stations nationwide for broadcast in Earth Day week, 2010. See the full press release here.

Filming has begun for Designing Healthy Cities. Harry Wiland and Dale Bell are traveling across the country documenting stories of people who are making efforts to improve the public's health by focusing on the built environment.

The innovative Going to Green Sustainability Curriculum and Video series was launched on April 22nd, 2009 in honor of Earth Day 2009. This package is available through the online PBS Shop website.

The pilot episode for the America's Family Farmers series is nearing completion. This episode focuses on Chris Cadwell's famous heirloom tomatoes and features recipes from celebrity chef and James Beard award winner Suzanne Goin.

Media & Policy Center: America's Children

In Development

Our future depends on the health and wellbeing of our children. More so than the state of our oil reserves, or the quality of our air and water, the state of our children foretells how, and under what conditions, our society can thrive. Unfortunately, anxiety about the physical, emotional, and mental condition of our children, and the heated debate about how we are raising our most precious resource, preys upon our nation's conscience.

America's Children is meant to act as a wake-up call. The proposed multi-hour PBS Series will devote itself to different subject areas affecting the quality of life of our children. The project will highlight best practice solutions from around the country. We will hear from the children themselves, acting as on location journalists or on-camera subjects. Program topics will include: the role and importance of family, school, and community; health care reform and access to medical care for all children; maintaining good health through proper diet, nutrition and exercise; the challenge of childhood obesity; legislative reform; re-inventing the built environment to promote healthier life-styles; and reaching out to the most needy: those suffering from the impact of poverty, racial discrimination, violence, abuse, unequal justice, and environmental injustice.

Our partner for the project is Irwin Redlener, M.D., president of the Children's Health Fund.  With Dr. Redlener as our on-camera guide and expert interviewer, we will craft a richly textured, visual framework that fleshes out the Children's Health Fund's well-documented findings.  The series will:

  • Feature real stories of 21st-century children on-location with Dr. Redlener
  • Capture their innate storytelling ability
  • Empower children and youth to share multifaceted dimensions of their lives
  • Provide them with the means to "shoot" their own stories, unencumbered but gently guided by our production staff.
  • Use children's commentary as a narrative thread to explore the issues
  • Use adult insight/expert commentary to introduce and frame the issues
  • Illustrate "best practice public health models," showing what is working for kids and why
  • Include guides to positive action and resolution for the challenges presented

We aim to give voice to the children, teens and families who can illuminate — through their personal struggles—abstract issues like: health care, poverty, violence, hunger, obesity, and substance abuse. Viewers will hear from youth aiming for college, or barely able to complete high school. Through these young pathfinders, viewers will get a nuanced, kid's eye view of childcare, foster care, home life, community and school. How it feels to grow up homeless, to be raised by gay parents, divorced parents, grandparents, or no parents or role models at all. We will try to discover what enables some children to be resilient and surmount the odds stacked against them.

As with And Thou Shalt Honor and Edens Lost & Found, America's Children will include educational and community-based outreach activities linked to local PBS affiliates; academic curricula meant for high schools (professional development), colleges, and medical schools; a PBS companion book; community action guides; interactive web site; a national publicity and promotion campaign; a multi-volume video resource library devoted to all aspects of children's health and well-being; and a series of regional and local televised town hall meetings to be aired as follow-up programs after the initial broadcast of the four-hour national PBS series.

Other resources for America's Children: