Northwell Community Scholars (NCS) works in collaboration with school districts throughout our catchment area (downstate New York and Connecticut) that are selected based on social determinants of health data including economic disparities and educational vulnerability indicating the presence of systemic barriers disadvantaging the students therein. The program offers high school students socioemotional support and mentorship as well as opportunities for academic advancement, professional/life skill development, college/career exploration, and leadership and empowerment—scholars attending a participating college receive scholarship funding.
In their senior year of high school our scholars participate in the creation of a media campaign of their own design, dreamt up and inspired by their personal experiences and the changes they would like to see in the world. Our 2025 seniors created a social media campaign—Choose Yourself—including 3 original short films produced in collaboration with Connected Health Solutions, Inc. (CHS), behind-the-scenes clips detailing their processes and intentions, and interview clips regarding their interactions with, and perceptions of, social media.
The NCS program’s goal of this leadership project is to empower under-resourced young people by educating them on self-reflective strength-based practices, fostering transferrable skill development, encouraging them to take up space and use their voices to tell their stories, and providing them with a team and platform to bring their ideas to fruition. In turn, we hope the campaign created by these young people will empower others like them, destigmatize challenges they face, encourage them to pursue their dreams, and be unafraid to choose themselves.
Ricky Wenthen, Senior Program Manager of NCS and Licensed Master Social Worker, collaborated on curriculum creation and co-facilitated workshops with Kenny Shults, Principal and Founder of CHS.
The Choose Yourself campaign was two years in the making, as this cohort of scholars worked with the NCS team and our CHS partners in their junior and senior years of high school.
For junior year, the team developed and implemented a curriculum created with a foundation in Positive Youth Development (PYD) covering readiness mindsets and healthy coping mechanisms, as well as narrative/script writing techniques and filmmaking concepts. We met in person for full-day workshops, bringing our scholars together from four different school districts, as well as virtually. The academic year culminated in the creation of a documentary-style film detailing the challenges our scholars face and the inherent strengths they use to overcome them, as well as highlighting the NCS program and its mentors.
In senior year, we tasked the scholars with creating their own film(s)/campaign—we facilitated workshops designed to activate and empower their voices and moderated a creative process among them. The program intention was to allow for the scholars to have as much agency as possible and lead the process, with the assistance of the NCS and CHS teams to provide support, guidance, and the resources to bring their shared vision to life.
All teens from under-resourced areas, almost entirely children of immigrants or immigrants themselves, and predominantly Hispanic/Latino and people of color, our scholars quickly found commonality in their experiences and clarified their cohort voice and intention. Our now seniors built on the concepts we discussed in their junior year and created three new, original short-films:
Their campaign also utilized interview-style clips from their junior year addressing social media, adding depth to their utilization of social media as a platform for this campaign. The intention was to showcase both the good and bad aspects of social media for young folks, and to have our scholars act as “positive social media influencers” to reach other folks like them. Additionally, their campaign included behind-the-scenes clips acting as mini-documentaries to provide further insight into the creative and production processes, as well as the intentions they had for their films and overall campaign.
We faced logistical challenges in coordinating our scholars, particularly for in-person workshops and filming days, since they came from four different school districts in two different counties. Our team worked diligently to communicate with them, select appropriate dates, provide transportation to shared locations, and offer food on long days. Our primary challenge in practice was motivating and incentivizing our scholars to participate meaningfully. We overcame this in by focusing on empowering our scholars, creating short-form works, and leveraging social media—functioning as “positive social media influencers” was a bit more accessible for scholars for whom “filmmaking” was of less interest.
As a result of their participation in our program and the creation of this campaign, our scholars learned and honed valuable skills including working cohesively as a team, conflict mitigation and resolution, and democratic and equitable decision making. We crafted a safe environment in which they were able to express themselves vulnerably and freely, allowing them to connect deeply and tell stories founded in personal and shared truths. They identifed and used their voices through this work, successfully collaborating to bring their shared vision into reality. They developed the ability to tell their own stories—who they are, where they come from, their challenges and strengths, what they care about, where they are going—and we believe this ability is power.
In about 4 months, across all platforms and through multiple dissemination tactics, Choose Yourself has already reached over 18,000 people. We premiered the campaign in a theater for family and friends, and we continue to share it on social media, through our school partners, and via internal and external institutional communication channels. We created a website dedicated to this campaign, as well as an Instagram account (already with 14,500 views across campaign posts) to build a program audience we will grow each year. Viewer engagement and feedback demonstrates high relatability from our target audience, and we look forward to continuing to watch this campaign inspire...please check it out for yourself!
“This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life.” – Maria, NCS scholar and screenwriter/co-director for The Talk
