Encounters: The YPM's Greatest Hits 7/1/2006 - 8/6/2006 ENCOUNTERS: The YMP's Greatest Hits celebrated three years of Galerias Youth and Media Project, which involved high school students in arts mentorship projects. The multi-media program was a collaborative project with the San Francisco Arts Institute, The California College for the Arts, Youth Speaks, Out of Site, Leadership High School, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.   Mind Maps: The ReGeneration Anniversary Show <2006> Illegal Entry <2006> Digital Mural Project: Dulce Pinzón <2006> Digital Mural Project: Julio Morales & William Scott <2006> Encounters: The YPM's Greatest Hits <2006> African by Legacy, Mexican by Birth <2006> Digital Mural Project: Branca Nitzsche <2006> Graphic Witness: Works by Jesus Barraza & Juan R. Fuentes <2006> 1 17 0 0 0 STATEMENT     CURATORIAL STATEMENT ENCOUNTERS: The YPM’s Greatest Hits marks the 3-year anniversary of Galeria de la Raza’s Youth & Public Media program dedicated to community, education and youth mentorship. Youth and Public Media (YPM) is a mentorship program taught by Julio Morales, Galería's youth program coordinator, in collaboration with a series of resident artists Felipe Dulzaides, Sergio De La Torre, David Goldberg, Euan Macdonald and Jenifer Wofford. Youth Public Media attempts to challenge traditional notions of arts education, mentoring and social activism by partnering with local educational institutions to train students from Art colleges to develop and teach media based-arts curriculum to high school participants. The YPM expands the number of Bay Area artists and students of color working in community and cultural development fields, while providing youth training in new technologies and in creating artworks that address issues of social justice. Youth Public Media is a collaborative project with the San Francisco Art Institute, the California College for the Arts, Youth Speaks, Out of Site, Leadership High School and Yerba Buena Center for The Arts. This unique partnership allows college students to mentor high school students in the hopes of challenging recent results published by The San Francisco Unified School District of test scores and graduation rates at an “unacceptable” national level with dropout rates in some Bay Area Schools as high as at 29.3 %. The majority of these drop-outs are Latino and African-American youth. The YPM functions as an intervention tool for youth to become more aware of higher educational opportunities while engaging them in thought-provoking social art projects. ENCOUNTERS: The YPM’s Greatest Hits features video, photography, and installations created during this three-year mentorship program with projects that range from urban interventions to performative and personal narratives in public spaces. The exhibition also includes a series of interactive workshops taught by YPM participants and open to the public. Galería’s youth programs are funded by the California Arts Council, a state agency, the National Endowment for the Arts, the rockefeller Foundation, and the Nelson Fund.