YR Media (formerly Youth Radio) today announces two grants, totaling $875,000, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These grants will enable YR Media to expand its youth-driven content exploring the issues, movements, arts and ideas that shape young people’s lives and the future of democracy.

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“We are grateful to the Gates Foundation for these generous grants, which enable us to continue expanding on YR Media’s success in creating innovative, future-building pathways of communication for historically underrepresented communities”

The Youth Voices grant will be used to elevate the perspective of young people by capturing diverse voices through the lens of the next generation of journalists. By expanding YR Media’s dynamic engagement model, the funding will accelerate skill-building and civic participation among the young people who are most likely to experience systemic barriers at school, in the economy and in the public sphere.

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The Curricula & Community for Youth-led Storytelling grant will enable YR Media to create a community of practice and provide tools that educators need to elevate the voices of young BIPOC students. This project will build and develop a community around educators and young contributors nationwide to learn and share best practices in journalism, music and audio production, design and other resources. Students will be empowered to tell their own stories through various media, via an easy-to-use curriculum that educates these emerging leaders about specific areas of media and media literacy.

“We are grateful to the Gates Foundation for these generous grants, which enable us to continue expanding on YR Media’s success in creating innovative, future-building pathways of communication for historically underrepresented communities,” said Kyra Kyles, CEO at YR Media. “These investments will enable us to continue our mission of creating space for deeper dialogue around important issues that directly impact the social and economic mobility of young people, and facilitate change-making multimedia projects by and for them.”

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