News Article

The Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media at Gonzaga University and the Youth Leadership Spokane Class of 2006 are partners in a $1,000 grant from State Farm Insurance to develop a game to help middle-school students better understand advertising.

The grant is intended to help underwrite youth service projects for the National and Global Youth Service Day in April. The Youth Leadership Spokane Class was selected recently as a State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Award Winner.

“As a class, we plan to use the grant to serve the community by working with the Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media at Gonzaga University,” said Violet Rogers, a senior at Mead High School. “We will create a game that teaches middle-school students how to understand the messages of advertising.”

The Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media is part of the Gonzaga University Masters Program in Communication and Leadership Studies.

The class has divided into four groups. The Survey Team will prepare and conduct a survey of middle-school students to test their media awareness. Information gained from the survey will be used by the PowerPoint and Game Design teams to produce an introductory PowerPoint presentation and the game itself. The goal of the class is to create a tool that is portable and that can be used with minimal explanation by any group of middle-school students. The PR team will market the project and produce an event to introduce the game to the public.

Youth Leadership Spokane, a program of Leadership Spokane, is an annual training program that prepares a diverse group of Spokane County high school students for leadership roles in the community. YLS builds opportunities for leadership for young people and raises the community’s awareness of their contributions to civic life.

National and Global Youth Service Day is the largest service event in the world. The event mobilizes youth to identify and address the needs of their communities through service, recruits the next generation of volunteers, and educates the public about the year-round contributions of young people as community leaders.

Among the primary goals of the Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media (NW-ARM) www.nwresponsiblemedia.org is to organize and educate the community about media literacy and media responsibility.

For more information contact Professor John Caputo, director of the Masters Program in Communication and Leadership Studies and the Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media at (509) 323-6656; or Linda Finney, executive director of Leadership Spokane, at (509) 459-4110.