CONNECTThe Love Story
The Love Story runs workshops on multimedia storytelling for those interested in applying the craft of narrative journalism, photojournalism, and documentary filmmaking to their personal stories and produce, in a documentary interview, stories of those who have already transformed their loss into creative expression. As creatives, they will relate to themselves as courageous, compassionate, and powerful storytellers rather than people who need to be “helped” or “fixed.”
In what areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
East LA
Westside
City of Los Angeles
How do you plan to use these resources to make change?
Engage residents and stakeholders
Expand a pilot or a program
Produce and distribute the documentary journals to college campuses
How will your proposal improve the following CONNECT metrics?
Rates of volunteerism
Adults getting sufficient social & emotional support
Percentage of Angelenos that volunteer informally (Dream Metric)
Total number of local social media friends and connections (Dream Metric)
Attendance at public/open streets gatherings (Dream Metric)
Describe in greater detail how you will make LA the best place to CONNECT.
One in every 12 young adults, 15- to 24-years-old, have made a suicide plan at some point. One-in-a-half out of every 100 students have actually attempted it and nearly half of those never told anyone. Ninety percent of people who have committed suicide were depressed and withdrawn, and love loss is one of the leading causes of depression and isolation.
Our organization is committed to suicide prevention by providing connection through the power of storytelling. Our multimedia production company, The Love Story Media, Inc. produces content and publishes quarterly documentary journals.
These digital and printed "documentary journals" is a collection of journal entries from our writers' interview experiences and the videos covering interviews. Most importantly, the documentary journals provide blank pages for customers to journal their experiences of letting go so they may discover their own experiences and find the courage to reach out and share.
The documentary journal is produced for people who have loved and lost, of people who have loved and lost, by people who have loved and lost. Since college students are one of the highest young adults at risk after a love loss, our digital and print copies will be distributed among colleges bookstores throughout Los Angeles. Thirty-three percent of those proceeds will fund the workshops of our non-profit arm, The Love Story, Inc.
Our non-profit arm, The Love Story, will provide online and in-person workshops. By emphasizing our values on courage, compassion and contribution, we encourage our students to learn the craft of story, apply it as a personal catharsis, and publish their work to our community as a contribution.
Once our Angelinos will start writing in The Love Story journals, we will invite them to engage their experiences with others on our online community by sharing parts of their journal entries and viewing other submissions. They also have the opportunity to workshop their journal entries through our online and in-person workshops that sharpens their writing craft. Ten percent of the profits from our curriculum and workshops will also provide scholarships to those in need.
Please explain how you will evaluate your work.
We will measure the success of our educational impact by the number of online and live workshop registrations.
We will measure the success of the social impact from our stories by our online metrics such as mailing lists, unique monthly visitors on Google Analytics, and open, click-through, bounce and retention rates.
We will measure the success of social connection based on our digital and printed documentary journal sales, the number of production applications, and the number journal entries submitted by our customers. We will also measure connection through social shares, likes, comments, and followers on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter.
How can the LA2050 community and other stakeholders help your proposal succeed
Money (financial capital)
Volunteers/staff (human capital)
Publicity/awareness (social capital)
Infrastructure (building/space/vehicles, etc.)
Education/training
Technical infrastructure (computers, etc.)
Community outreach
Network/relationship support
Quality improvement research