digital youth network

Terrence Thompson, a Junior Mentor who has been with DYN since 2005, is up for a big honor with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, to be announced May 25th at the Chicago Cultual Center. Terrence, second from right in the back row, is a Whitney Young High School senior who will graduate in June. He is among seven finalists of the NFTE Chicago’s Seventh Annual Citywide Business Plan Competition. The students will compete for venture grants and a chance to advance to the NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge in New York City. Good luck, Terrence! We're proud of you!

Avigayl called this photograph "Wonderland." It is one of many examples of her photographic skills that she's posted recently on YouMedia. "I just had so much stuff that I never got to share anywhere, so I guess now I'm going a little cray cray!"

This design was created by Ikwan, a sixth-grader at Carter G. Woodson. Ikwan made this in his Spoken Word class, where students looked at poetry broadsides, which are poems made into posters. They talked about minimalism in poetry and how to represent an idea of a poem without using obvious images. Ikwan created this in Adobe Illustrator.

Shane is a videographer who makes his films at YouMedia. How does he describe himself? "The reason why I do videos is to get people to think about certain issues happening in our lives as teens," he writes on his YouMedia site. "And if what I have to say changes you... fine. If it doesn't that's ok too. But do I get you to think differently? Do I get you to think at all?"

Check out Shane's latest video, teaming up with Cure Violence.

Tamara is a student at University of Chicago Woodlawn Campus Charter School. She has been maintaining an active blog about all sorts of subjects -- from personal identity to faith to poetry. Here she writes about her neighborhood in language that is at once stark and powerful. Her blog post was titled, My Street Corner.

Chicken smelled breezes

Wind blowing hard towards my face

My street corner

Filthy dried up gum

Concrete full of trash

My street corner

Gray, Curved, Destroyed

Bulky, rough and rocky

my street corner

cars speeding by

couldn't get any speed bumps

my street corner

kids just tryin' to have fun

riding their bikes across the street

but cars don't care

my street corner

stop signs not visible

not visible to young teens and drunk drivers

my street corner