Youth-IN

Positive Youth! Yasmyn Camier was born and raised in the beautiful French Caribbean Island Guadeloupe and currently lives in Quebec City where she works as an intern at the Ministry of Environment of Quebec.

Youth-IN Congratulates Yasmin on her invitation to be a part of the International Youth Day 2012 Google+ Hangout following her "valuable input to the launch of our World Youth Report on youth employment in February 2012" at the UN headquarters in New York. On August 9, 2012 she will speak from her experiences as a Caribbean youth under the theme "Partnering with and for Youth – Employment". (To view Hangout go to www.gplus.to/unitednations at 11AM EST) Camier was also selected in 2011 in two international contests to attend a conference on Environment in Canada, and one on the Afrodescendant Youth held in Costa Rica. As an observer at the United Nations High-level Meeting on Youth in July 2011, she recognized the tools needed to enhance her role as a coordinator volunteer in the international youth association Give1Project, based in Paris.

In early 2012, she was nominated as one of the three young contributors to the United Nations World Youth Report and was a panellist at the Report’s launch in New York City. Camier graduated from Aix-Marseille University in France in 2010 with a Bachelor in Biology and Ecology. She is currently completing a Master of Science in environment at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. Camier is also involved in youth associations such as IANA, CNRJ which support youth projects through mentoriship.

Positive Youth! Asha Vigilante Pini: Is a professional Website/Graphic designer offering services in print design, logo design, custom illustration, web development and flash animation. Asha has held several positions as Senior Website/Graphic Designer with marketing agencies across the region including Grenada, Dominica, Antigua and the British Virgin Islands. Asha currently resides in Saint Lucia. Asha Vigilante Pini is the winner of the Youth-IN Logo & Website Design Competition the first competition launched by Youth-IN in 2011.

Positive Youth! Born in South Trinidad, Jeston is destined to have an impact on the film industry. Starting his career early in music and audio production, Jeston decided to transfer his skill set to video production. After studying, Motion Picture, and working in the U.S for some time, Jeston pondered the best way to make an impact in the world of video production. It was then that he decided to return to his homeland and lend his creative eye to the Trinidadian audience. Doing work for various music artistes and major corporate entities in the Trinidad & Tobago, the Caribbean, U.S, Canada and Europe.

Jeston is one of the young emerging filmmakers and video directors out of Trinidad & Tobago. When Jeston saw that the ILO launched a video contest for young people (from 18-29 years) on how the global jobs crisis is affecting them and their communities Jeston put his skills into practice and his vision into production. The video “THE POWER OF ONE - Global Youth Unemployment” emerged and was submitted (See the video here: http://youtu.be/amAqI1fYGhA) - Be sure to share it with other youth in your area.

In addition to his busy schedule Jeston finds the time each summer to volunteer at the Manhatten Youth Downtown Community Center http://manhattanyouth.org/ by working with the children.

Positive Youth! Mikhail Gibbings - The Innovation Prize Winner of the Youth-IN VideoMix Competition This fun loving, charismatic 16 year Mikhail Gibbings is a lower 6th form student at Trinity College East in Trinidad & Tobago. He also plays music, mainly jazz and blues, primarily as a guitarist.

Here is his own description of the process of developing the winning video entitled “Finding Love”: “Before hearing about this competition I had never thought about, much less tried to make any type of film. After coming up with a few ideas, I talked to my good friend Sy-Han Wu who is a brilliant visual artist who is featured throughout the video drawing various things including the chalk butterfly and rose as well as the writing in the 1st scene with the hands. The hands were those of another of my good friends, Kristian Ali, who also helped me and Sy-Han in a scene that involved drawing, over 100 times, an incredibly detailed crying eye which was eventually cut from the final video. Both of these friends helped make this video possible under some hard conditions. In addition to keeping everything from being a job during the process, given the stressful nature of the time lapse/stop-motion mediums which I used, they helped me with everything from start to finish. I could not have done this without them.

The music was one of my favorite parts of this project to make since my passion is music. It is 99% improvised so it took exactly the amount of time to write as it took to record which saved a considerable amount of time and was very fun to do. Our equipment was incredibly improvised also. Especially since we had a budget only large enough to purchase a roll of electric tape and a bottle of hand sanitizer. Our tripod was broken so the camera had to be taped to it. Lighting when it got darker during the 1st scene was achieved using a cell phone. The last scene was shot on an IPod which was duct taped to a tripod and the images on the ground were drawn with old chalk from everyone's houses. The scene which was shot on my front door using an image I alone made in my living room using half a roll of electric tape and a lamp. And the audio recorded in my room by twisting a microphone around the same tripod and almost pressing it to the guitar.

This was a very interesting competition especially since it addressed an issue which is plaguing our society and has been since the beginning of our existence. Maybe we can make a small dent with spreading awareness of the issue even if we can do nothing to stop violence against women entirely. What we can do is not do it ourselves and possibly we can encourage others we know to discontinue this abuse. We cannot make an impact alone. I wish we could do more, but they can, the abusers themselves need to stop, the ball is in their court. It always has been. Stop the abuse. Please." Finding Love: http://youtu.be/dlmPjI4DRfw