A.C.T.I.O.N. Project's art and activist work was profiled on Plum TV's Citizen Active show in a segment about education and organizations working to transform it. The segment highlights the group's HIV/ Aids work in Washington DC and in the Bronx during the summer and fall of 2009.

See the video on: plumtv.com

By Danielle Hensley, 13

DreamYard is Chelsea John’s outlet. She became involved in third grade when the organization came to her school to teach art, and she’s now a high school junior bringing art to others.

Read more: ypress.org

On a recent cold Saturday morning inside the Bronx Charter School for the Arts, 10 students gathered to rehearse a skit. The group pretended to stand or sit in a subway car. One young man or woman held his arm in the air holding onto an imaginary subway bar.

The students are part of the DreamYard Action Project, an after-school arts, activism and youth development program that serves about 100 students. It is part of DreamYard Inc, which serves roughly 8,500 Bronx teens and operates in 32 public schools. The organization, begun in 1994, also runs the three-year-old DreamYard Preparatory School, a public high school on 170th Street.

Read more: thebronxbeat.org

Showing it like it is

'Urban teen issues' get their close-up in the boros First Annual Youth Film Festival

A teenager walks through a cloud of smoke into a living room. His haggard mom reclines on a beat-up couch. She turns and gives him a dirty look. "You're disturbing my high," she says.

This scene, from 19-year-old Richard Memminger's documentary "Dependant," the opening film in the First Annual Youth Film Festival held earlier this month in Crotona Park, was typical of the festival: It is scary, but nothing new for a movie about life in the­ 'hood.

Read more: NYDailyNews.com