To Be Heard

About the Project

To Be Heard is a documentary about three young poets from the Bronx who learn to use their own poetry to change their lives and the world around them. The film is feature length and is being versioned for a) feature-length, b) one-hour TV length and c) classroom length. The film took nearly six years to complete. It had its world premiere in November of 2011 at the Doc NYC film festival.

To Be Heard is a film about the power of language as a tool for both personal and societal transformation. To this end, the film team is focusing on two major initiatives. The first, Power Poetry, will be the world’s first mobile poetry community for youth. It will be a place and a way for young people to share their poetry on a global scale. And it will become a way for young people to use their poetry directly to change the world. By partnering with NGO’s, young poets will be able to link the power of their own words to a nexus of social change initiatives. We will expand the social networking concept into one of social engagement and unleash the creative energies of young people to achieve this.

Secondly, the To Be Heard team is building a series of partnerships with organizations like the ASCD, The Campaign For the Civic Mission of Schools, The Newseum, The Faces of Learning Project, The International Reading Association and The National Association of School Librarians. The purpose of these partnerships is singular and critical to the very fabric of our society: The United States is experiencing a literacy crisis of monumental proportions—not only are nearly two thirds of all US prison inmates functionally illiterate, but only one out of 8 American adults reads well enough to understand our Constitution! With this in mind, To Be Heard will be used to spearhead a major literacy campaign.

The Fledgling Fund Impact

The Fledgling Fund is pleased to be able to support To Be Heard. The campaign for the film has the ability to engage new audiences in creative and powerful responses to our education crisis. We know that this film will inspire teachers, students, parents and administrators to think differently about the power of poetry.