Official Promo Trailer for V.I.P.s

Check out the official promo trailer for V.I.P.s which features three of the minority professionals profiled in this documentary film. After you watch the clip, please post comments/feedback to share your thoughts with the production team.

MEET THE V.I.P.s

Learn more about the professionals who are profiled in this film project and their inspiring stories below:





Definition of a V.I.P.: "A V.I.P. is someone that follows his/her dreams and does everything they can to make those dreams a reality."









ZHALISA CLARKE
Age: 29
Race: Jamaican, Panamanian & Filipino
Hometown: Washington,D.C.
Current city of residence: San Francisco, CA
Profession: Strategy Consultant
Educational background: BA, Harvard College; MBA, Harvard Business School

Zhalisa's Bio: Zhalisa grew up the child of immigrants, in a neighborhood in DC where the high school graduation rate was quite low. Because Zhalisa's parents valued education, they applied for scholarships so that she could attend private school. While there were very few minorities at her school, and she had much less in terms of financial resources than her classmates, she worked really hard in all of her classes because she knew that education was going to be the key to her success.
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Definition of a V.I.P.: "One who takes their passions and abilities seriously and utilizes his/her talents at the service for the struggle of freedom and justice."






ELICE HENNESSEE
Age: 25
Race: African American
Hometown: Inglewood, CA
Current city of residence: Los Angeles, CA
Profession: Educator/Consultant/Entrepreneur
Educational background: UCLA graduate
Personal website: funkadelicsquared.blogspot.com

Élice's bio: Élice Hennessee was raised in Inglewood, California, and like many growing up in the inner-city, she faced various socio-economic hardships. The Los Angeles, inner-city public school system did not necessarily prepare Élice for the goals she wished to achieve. But, at an early age, she decided to not let her circumstances affect her ability to achieve her goals so decided to take her future into her own hands and make fervent attempts at realizing her goals. After much effort, many long nights in public libraries and a mentor who gave much time and academic support, Élice was able to accomplish goals despite her circumstances.

Her entrepreneurial spirit coupled with her sensibilities toward inadequacies in the education system led her to start a business teaching, tutoring and mentoring students in order to help them reach their academic, personal and professional goals. She strongly believes that students should have far more support and academic assistance than she had, while in primary and secondary school. She has over 8 years of experience in the field of education and she has taught in both traditional and non-traditional classroom settings, developed curriculum, and taught students ages 5-53.

Élice’s company, Literary Pro’s, offers full tutorial and editing services including test prep, K-12 and college level one-on-one and group tutoring, writing development, ESL, proofreading and editing.

Élice Hennessee is also a writer. She has written for MTV, Starpulse.com and other various media sources and online and print publications.

She currently maintains a blog addressing a plethora of different interesting topics from politics to relationships to art and culture. You can find her blog here: FunkadelicSquared.blogspot.com

To contact her for tutorial and/or editing services, please email her at: literarypros@gmail.com

Oh, and Élice also has a handsome and brilliant younger brother, Mouton Hennessee, whom she would like to mention - per HIS request.
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Definition of a V.I.P.: "A VIP can be anyone. But mainly, a VIP is anyone that is constantly bettering themselves and does whatever is necessary to succeed in their chosen space."




GALAX WOMACK
Age: 32
Race: African American
Hometown: Palmdale, CA
Current City of Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Profession: Web Developer
Educational background: Associates degree Electronics ITT

Galax's bio: For Galax, growing up in Palmdale, CA in the 90’s was a bit rough. His parents moved his family to what was then the nicer part of town. The problem was that there were not many people of color there. Galax guesses that his parents thought it better that he grew up in a white neighborhood than a black one. This meant growing up hearing racial slurs or jokes at least once a day till he was in the 8th grade. At that point Galax switched schools and finally got to be around his people. This was bitter sweet. He found that most of the other black kids at school had no real goals for themselves. Basically sports and doing dirt was the extent of their ambition. Of course growing up around white people means you are going to talk a bit more proper than the other black kids. That along with not being interested in sports and getting into dirt, didn’t make Galax many black friends. He had to reach 10th grade to finally feel accepted by his own. But by then, all he wanted to do was get out of Palmdale and never look back. Galax knew if he stayed there he would never reach his potential. I made the decision to go to ITT to get his electronics degree. He had been interested in electronics and computers all of his life so it seemed like the logical choice. After ITT Galax realized he hated electronics, but loved software. So he started teaching himself how to code. And now he makes a pretty good living as a Web Developer.

No Child Left Behind?! - The Achievement Gap is Still Creating Holes in Education

Check out THIS NY Times article that reveals that the achievement gap between black & white students is still a significant problem. A recent study resulted in the following startling findings:

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys

Only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty

In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower.

Math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.

Shifting the Paradigm: Jay-Z is the Top Business Role Model for our Youth?

Check out Dr. Boyce Watkins interesting "Atlanta Post" article that discusses the need for business role models for today's black youth below. Dr. Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the initiator of the National Conversation on Race:




"Jay-Z is an amazing rapper. Some think that he’s been in the game for a bit too long, but I don’t agree. Personally, I think “Jigga” simply reflects the fact that hip-hop itself is aging. Jazz was once solely the domain of rebellious teenagers, but now you’re sure to hear it playing in every old folk’s home across America. The same is going to be true for hip-hop.

Jay-Z has said repeatedly that he will stop making music, and I’m sure that one day he will. However, there is one area in which we need to retire Jay-Z: In his role as the pre-eminent black businessman in America. It’s not that Jay-Z is a bad role model, it’s just that he’s been exhausted.

Don’t get me wrong, Jigga has made significant amounts of money by busting rhymes on his left and selling clothes on his right. Good for him. But is he really the best business role model for young black males, who are already consumed with a culture that teaches them that all they can be are rappers or athletes? No, he is not. Young black women also find that their leading role models in business are women like Oprah and Beyonce, both of whom keep us hyper-fixated on the entertainment industry. It’s time to make a change.

When our kids are looking for business role models, why not consider people like Dr. Randal Pinkett (The Apprentice), Ursula Burns (CEO of Xerox), Ken Chenault (CEO of American Express), or Chuck Creekmur (founder of AllHipHop.com). These individuals are educated self-starters who used a variety of brilliant and creative methods to either get to the top of the corporate ladder or to build their own corporate ladders. Sure, some of them are linked to entertainment, but they are the bosses of the industry and not one of the slaves.

Black males especially would gain from having a new set of role models to encourage us to more effectively target our collective genius. Many of us only dream of throwing footballs and dribbling basketballs, leaving education on the table for others to use against us. Rather than finding the real money and opportunity that comes from being the smartest guy in the room, we are deliberately choosing to be the dumb jock with a fifth grade reading level. This should be unacceptable for us all.

Jay-Z and others like him are tremendous beneficiaries of media. Media tends to focus on the most glamorous and entertaining African Americans, rather than the most impactful. Women like Fantasia were sucked into thinking that the decisions to drop out of school and become a teen parent would all be corrected by one lucky stop at the American Idol audition. Not only did most of us see the destruction of Fantasia’s dream, we also see the millions of other Fantasia wannabes who gave up everything to live the high life of entertainment, but got the welfare office instead.

It’s a new century, so black folks need a new paradigm. The former entertainer or athlete who becomes a successful businessperson is certainly worthy of our respect. But few success stories in black America run through Hollywood, the recording studio or the NBA. Instead, the greatest and most powerful success stories in black America run through the classroom. Let’s make sure our kids don’t forget that."


For the full article, CLICK HERE

Black & Hispanic Youth Consume the MOST media...Now the real question is - What are they watching?

A recent national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time 'media multitasking' (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

Furthermore, substantial differences in media consumption emerge between White youth and Black or Hispanic youth, with the latter two groups consuming nearly 4.5 hours more media daily (13:00 of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites). The difference between White and minority youth is largest for TV: Black youth spend an average of 2:18 more per day with TV than White youth. The only medium where there are no racial or ethnic differences is print.

Study Finds: Today's Youth Prefer "Fame" over "Profession" & Black Children are More Desperate for it

Jake Halpern is an author, journalist, and radio producer. His book, "Fame Junkies" explores the fascinating and often dark implications of America's obsession with fame. As part of his research for the book, Halpern surveyed 650 teenagers in the Rochester, New York area to analyze how teens think about fame. The results produced some alarming findings that reinforce the need for projects like V.I.P.s.

Take a look at some of Halpern's key findings below:

*Forget being President of Harvard – Make me a Celebrity Personal Assistant…

A question asked: “When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?” There were five options to chose from and, among girls, the results were as follows: 9.5% chose “the chief of a major company like General Motors”; 9.8% chose “a Navy Seal”; 13.6% chose “a United States Senator”; 23.7% chose “the president of a great university like Harvard or Yale”; and 43.4% chose “the personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star.”
It’s worth noting: Research psychologists, like Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University, have long suspected that people with low-self esteem are the ones most likely to “bask in the reflected glory” of others. This appears to be true here. For example, among girls who indicated that they received bad grades in school (i.e., C’s or below), the percentage who opted to become assistants rose to 67%. What’s more, among both boys and girls who got bad grades – and who described themselves as being unpopular at school – the percentage who opted to become assistants rose further to 80%.

*Black Kids Are More Desperate for Fame…

African American kids were especially keen on becoming famous. When asked whether they would rather become famous, smarter, stronger, or more beautiful, 42% of them opted for fame whereas only 21% of whites did so. What’s more, almost 44% of African Americans said that their families would love them more if they became famous, while only 27% of white students said so.
It’s Worth Noting: Of course, there are many ways to explain this data, but one factor to be considered is that African American kids often have especially hard childhoods. According to a 2005 article in the New York Times, two-thirds of black children are born out of wedlock and nearly half of those children who live in single-parent households are poor. All of this seems to suggest that hardship may be driving many African American kids to embrace fame as a remedy to their woes.

*Teens who watch TV and read “glam mags” want and expect fame the most…

According to the study, teenagers who regularly watch certain celebrity-focused TV shows – namely Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and Insider – are more likely to believe that they themselves will someday become famous. The same trend appears to be true for those teenagers who read celebrity-focused magazines like US Weekly, Star, People, Teen People, YM and J-14. There is also a strong correlation between how many hours of television that teenagers watch in general and how badly they want to become famous. One of the questions on the survey asked: “If you could push a magic button that would change your life in one way, which of the following would you pick?” The options were (a) becoming smarter, (b) becoming much bigger or stronger, (c) becoming famous, (d) becoming more beautiful, and (e) my life doesn’t need any changing. Among those teens who watched one hour of television a day or less, only 15% of the boys and 17% of the girls opted for fame. But among those teens who watched five hours or more a day – and a good number of them did – 29% of the boys and 37% of the girls opted for fame.

*Heavy TV-watchers are especially likely to believe that fame will improve their lives…

Findings from the survey also suggest that teenagers who watch television frequently are more likely to believe that fame will improve their lives. For example, teens who watch five hours or more of television a day are significantly more likely than those who watch just an hour or less to agree with the statement, “Becoming a celebrity [will] make you happier.” Teens who watch five hours of television or more a day are also twice as likely as those who watch an hour or less to believe that their family will love them more if they become a celebrity.

For more on Halpern's study, please click here.

V.I.P.s Creator Teams w/ Dawn Richards to Create "Danity Kane" Comic Book

Check out this Essence.com article to learn more about V.I.P.s creator & E.P., Natashia McGough's collaboration with Dirty Money band member, Dawn Richards on the "Danity Kane" comic book. For more info on this project, please click here.