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| Featured Non-Profit: The Vera Project |
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 The Vera Project (Vera) is a music-arts center run by and for youth. By engaging participants at all levels of music production and community organizing, Vera strives to fulfill its mission to fuel personal and community transformation through the vehicle of popular music shows produced in partnership with young people in Seattle.
Since its inception in 2000, Vera has provided a unique resource to Seattle's youth and music community by maintaining a safe, alcohol and smoke free environment for people of all ages to come together and experience music in a way that transcends commercial entertainment and erases divisions between performer, staff and audience. Vera uses its downtown location as a means to bridge the divisions that exist between neighborhoods and bring people together in a neutral and open space. Weekly concerts and events fuse with educational programming and a participatory governance structure to give young people an empowering, inclusive sense of music that stresses their ability to positively affect their surroundings, both within the organization and in their daily lives.
Vera's downtown venue is central to the organization's activities, which include:
- Weekly concerts & events
- Silkscreen printing
- Visual art exhibitions
- "Cafe" performances
- Audio engineering training
- Event production training
- Workshops and classes
- A music resource center
- Political engagement
- Governance committees
- Leadership training
- Internships
These activities, many of which are youth-initiated, collectively make up the Vera program. They are run by committee, and blend the ambition, talent, energy, and resourcefulness of Vera's young participants with the expertise of some of Seattle's most experienced community leaders.
Vera takes the primacy of music in young people's lives as an opportunity to create learning experiences and build self-awareness and self-esteem in an audience with few chances to express itself otherwise. Through these learning experiences and an emphasis on the process of popular music, Vera promotes critical thinking, empathy, emotional intelligence and civic participation. Vera uses the power of music as a primary vehicle with which to develop a community of healthy, compassionate and innovative individuals. Vera's passionate, patient, and professional approach to popular music has opened up new worlds to thousands of young people, many of whom have never actively taken part in their communities before. Vera kids become great adults.
"OTHER VENUES HAVE STEPPED UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF OPENING THEIR DOORS TO THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. BUT WITHOUT VERA, THERE'S NO ESTABLISHED OUTLET FOR THE ARTISTICALLY MINDED ADOLESCENTS." - THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2003
Beyond simply presenting music shows, Vera seeks to fulfill a specific need in the community. Vera is the only dedicated all-ages music venue in Seattle that 1) offers access and participation to young people who want to pursue their music-related interests, 2) provides emerging musicians the opportunity to perform and gain exposure in a professional environment, and 3) combines quality late-night all-ages entertainment with diverse music-arts programming.
Access and participation are particularly essential to Vera's function. Vera is unique in its ability to accommodate interests ranging from sound engineering to community and event organizing to voter registration. Over 1,100 active volunteers take advantage of these opportunities annually. Vera's passionate, patient, and professional approach to popular music has opened up new worlds to thousands of young people, many of whom have never actively taken part in their communities before.
Opportunities to learn skills with Vera's focus on process and community participation rarely exist in a medium as familiar to youth as music. Although Seattle is home to many neighborhood after-school facilities including city-run community centers, Boys and Girls Clubs, and YMCAs, none offer consistent, affordable, high-quality music programming. Instead, young people interested in music are steered toward more commercial, adult-oriented venues that only offer music for its entertainment value. Vera's research using public surveys, community forums, and workshops has shown that Seattle wants and needs a youth-music organization with motivations such as Vera's to provide young people with new opportunities to experience music and to get engaged.
Additionally, Vera aims to connect with diverse but like-minded organizations in the community rather. In 2004, Vera will collaborate with 18 agencies and groups to co-produce events both at Vera and elsewhere. The fruits of these collaborations span everything from concerts such as the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration with Seattle Young People's Project to political education round-tables with 2V/ACT. Vera also has collaborated with groups such as YouthCare, The Service Board and Art in the Making to get homeless and at-risk youth involved at Vera, raise awareness and raise funds. Additionally, Vera has many partners with high school student groups and young people interested in social change and justice. This collaborative spirit is essential to Vera's broader goal of maintaining deep and far-reaching roots in the Seattle community and provides unique, genuine opportunities to increase diversity within the organization.
Nationally, reputable studies have proven that youth volunteer programs like Vera promote positive change and reduce negative behaviors and substance abuse:
- Youth who volunteer are three times more likely to volunteer as adults (Independent Sector/Gallup, 1996).
- Teens say the benefits received from volunteering are: Learning to respect others; learning to be helpful and kind; learning to understand people who are different from them; developing leadership skills; becoming more patient and acquiring a better understanding of good citizenship (Independent Sector/Gallup, 1996).
- Leaders recognize youth as the Nation's most valuable resource and have over and over again identified the need for programs that provide ongoing relationships with caring adults, safe places with structured activities, decision making skills, community service and participation in development, implementation and evaluation of development programs (HR 17, 103, 2001).
Vera is a unique and invaluable long-term resource to the community and to the local music industry. The skills participants gain from their experience at Vera are often put to use elsewhere.
- Five participants in Vera's sound engineering classes have gone on to work professionally in the field and are now teaching, developing and/or managing Vera's sound education curriculum.
- Three music production organizations, Loss Leader, Brick House and Bathtub Records, formed through collaborative efforts of Vera's youth volunteers.
- School Yard Heroes is the first "Vera Band" to have had noticeable success. The band met and played their first show at Vera. They can now be heard on often on the radio.
- Twelve local music organizations/businesses go to Vera first to fill staff and internship positions.
Vera's program structure stresses full participation in its governance as well as its learning opportunities, thus providing the ingredients crucial for youth to learn practical and positive life skills that have lasting, positive effects on the individual and community. For years adults have asked young people to volunteer and be engaged in the community; at Vera youth now have productive, meaningful roles that they themselves have been able to shape. Without Vera, this unique blend of popular music and civic involvement does not exist in Seattle.
"BY ALL ACCOUNTS, THE VERA PROJECT IS A COMPLETE SUCCESS." - THE STRANGER
Visit The Vera Project
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