Award-Winning Filmmaker Cheryl Houser Speaks with the Yleana Leadership Foundation
New York, NY — The Yleana Leadership Foundation, an educational nonprofit based in New York City, hosts annual summer SAT camps for underprivileged high school students. Over the summer, the foundation hosted a series of Imagination Lectures for students and staff featuring prominent community leaders.
On August 4, 2020, Cheryl Houser spoke as the final Imagination Lecture speaker of the summer. An award-winning filmmaker and founder of the production company Creative Breed, Houser is a storyteller who strives to bring people together. Our students were able to get an in-depth look at her movie, "Generation Startup", a documentary covering the lives of six young adults who attempt to build startups in Detroit. They were also able to watch Houser's video for former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, showing how an individual would be directly impacted by his policies. Overall, Cheryl Houser left Yleana students with the message that it is important to be vulnerable and to share experiences, because stories are what bring people together.
Yleana staff member Allison Pyo reflected on the lecture. She said, “ I learned not only about filmmaking but also the impact film and stories can have on people - how it can bring hope to and inspire people. My greatest takeaway was that storytelling can bring people together and help people realize similarities they have with people who may seem completely different from them. In an increasingly polarized society, the work she is doing actually has incredible value.”
The Yleana Leadership Foundation sees the US’s racial wealth gap (economic/wealth accumulation) as a consequence of the opportunity gap (education). Our mission is to decrease the opportunity gap in order to decrease the racial wealth gap - by making sure students have access to the best resources possible as they enter college, we will change their economic position and ability to accumulate wealth as adults.
Our population is 95% BIPOC, primarily Black and Latinx, with an average family income of $32,829. We partner with high schools and CBOs in Baltimore, Boston/North Shore MA, NYC, and Philadelphia. We are emphatically a non-creaming organization, meaning our actions are directed at slow, incremental change in the thick middle of the curve.