Palacio Podcast
VoiceWaves: Making Media Waves with Youth Voices
VoiceWaves is a Long Beach youth-led journalism and media-training project. The youth are learning to report, write, and create digital journalism content. One of its graduates, Michael Lozano, is now managing editor of the project housed in offices at St. Luke’s Church at 7th and Atlantic Avenue. PalacioMagazine.com interviewed Michael and one of the students of VoiceWaves, Yesenia Pacheco, about the importance of youth voices in the many issues facing Long Beach and the region.
Michael Lozano, Managing Editor, VoiceWaves 
Yesenia Pacheco, Student Journalist
VoiceWaves: Still Making Waves
PalacioMagazine.com Publisher and editor Antonio Ruiz was one of the co-founders of the VoiceWaves project in 2011. It was initially launched by New America Media in 2011 and was joined by a growing statewide network of youth media hubs known collectively as YouthWire. With initial major funding from the California Endowment, the media project has trained scores of high school and college students over the years to use digital photography, video, radio, and social media as community engagement tools. Now an independent project of Youth Leadership Institute, the students are gaining skills that will help them throughout their life and earn experience that they can turn into a career. Visit VoiceWaves.org for more information.
About Michael Lozano
Michael is an editor and multimedia journalist born to Mexican parents who started their own Domestic Violence counseling center in Southeast Los Angeles. For the past 6 years, his mentorship has provided youth opportunities to share their stories online, on NPR, KCET, the Long Beach Post, and other national websites. His articles have been syndicated and translated into multiple languages via New America Media and ImpreMedia, the nation’s largest Spanish-language news publisher. He was recently a fellow with UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies. Michael graduated from CSULB in 2011 with research honors in Sociology and a Journalism minor.
About Youth Leadership Institute
Youth Leadership Institute is a statewide nonprofit serving diverse youth across the state to address inequality, shape policy, and harness storytelling for social change. VoiceWaves is one of the various programs running out of the Youth Leadership Institute – Long Beach office. Other youth-led programs local to the Long Beach site include Betting On Our Future, a problem gambling and media education project; My Brother’s Keeper, a juvenile justice prevention research and mini-documentary project; and lastly, a tobacco education & policy project that focuses on regional change.
