Happy Valentine's Day

We (this organization's founders) are filmmakers who've partnered through decades worth of corporate, agency and creative projects. So back in 2023, starting the first Will You Hear Me Now? project required using our own storytelling skills to find new, creative, compelling ways to reach people and change the conversation around gun violence in schools and communities. Today, Will You Hear Me Now? is undergoing a real transition and we couldn't be more excited. We, the founders, reached out to the young people in our circles. They got excited about what we were proposing. And this is how we have moved from creating content, to mentoring and encouraging our young team members to create content.

Mentorship has been our intent all along, that we, the adult parents, didn't jump in like parents with our own voices and opinions about gun violence. The social media is full of adult opinionating on both sides of this issue. This is where we are a bit different. Our approach was to step back and give the stage to young adult and younger voices who'd be free to express their own thoughts in their own voices. And from what we can see, they are eager to do it.

Naarah, Farnsworth, Gavin, Krishi, Meher, Precious, Sarita and others aren't just responding to our prompts, they're stepping up, taking the initiative on a number of fronts. They are reaching out to their peers and getting them involved. We couldn't be happier because going viral was also our intent all along. The young people came through bright and strong expressing what love means to them for Valentine's Week. Naarah and Farnsworth are working toward an April screening of a documentary that is an extension of the work they've done in school and with us. They will be debuting it this spring. This promises to be a very productive year for our young team.

We've secured this .org domain and will have official non-profit status before long. This benefits you, our stakeholders, if only for the fact that any contribution to us is tax deductible which translates into more impact for donor and mission. We intend to be around for the duration and use whatever funding we get to extend our mission and get our young voices the widest, most impactful public platform.

We're under no delusion. These are hard, maybe even hostile, times for non-profits. it's always been an uphill climb particularly for non-profits that deal with gun violence. Today it's perhaps as steep as it's ever been. But we've learned a few things along the way. This is not a partisan issue. Finger-pointing doesn't work. Hostility doesn't work. Addressing the epidemic of gun violence is going to require cool, pragmatic heads on both sides of the Second Amendment debate. We will work with anybody of respectful and serious intent. But what we have here, what we've created is a safe space for young people to express themselves and they have. We are looking forward to a year of inspiration and action.