Dateline 2/14: Valentine’s Day Blog ❤

Yesterday an interview that our Executive Producer, Michael did last week, dropped, courtesy of Impactful Ninja, a YouTube channel run by activist podcaster, Dennis Kamprad. Impactful Ninja’s stated goal is to help the channel’s viewers “make a positive impact on the world and society.” Toward that end, Dennis focuses on today’s hot button social issues, including sustainability, poverty, indigenous peoples, our challenged ecosystem and most recently, How to address gun violence in schools, our project at www.willyouhearmenow.com. Click the image above to watch.

Michael took the audience through the history of our project, how we began brainstorming and pulling resources together last May, how we officially launched on the first anniversary of the Uvalde massacre at Robb Elementary School and then how we raised enough capital under the tightest deadline imaginable to make the trip to Detroit and record the choir’s workshop creation of “Will You Hear Me Now?” Michael elaborated on the crunch edit, then getting the Detroit promo to Senator Corey Booker and Representative Mikie Sherrill, his local congresspeople.

Impactful Ninja zeroed right in on the two key aspects of our project, namely:
1. That we are seeking to help young people speak their minds and tell their stories in their own words and
2. That we are aggregating those stories and putting them in front of lawmakers who can hopefully make a difference.

Michael explained that our work continues. That in Phase 2, we will create diverse and longer form videos and live content to engage young people, parents and all American communities. We seek to address the rise of violence, the loss of emotional security and life our young people experience. We are actively seeking collaborators and funding to expand the reach of the message that the voices of young people matter. Our shared vision is that someday a new generation will grow up without the specter of school and community shootings hanging over their heads.

Forward Motion

As our work evolves, we’ve learned three valuable lessons about projects like ours that we want to share with the Impactful Ninja team and our own followers at www.willyouhearmenow.com.

1) Leverage your network of friends and colleagues. You will be surprised who they know!

2) Don't underestimate the work.  Change takes time. (This one is particularly tough, given how often mass shootings occur and how slow American society is to move the needle on commonsense gun law reform.)

3) Recognize the resources you need and keep adding.  As the project grows, stay connected to the regulatory and legal needs. 

To those ends, we’ve just added a change.org petition to help us drive traffic and amplify the voices of students, who, though too young to vote, need to make their voices and concerns heard. You can find that petition here or scan the QR code to go to the site and sign up. As always we’re grateful to you for your support and attention to the concerns of our student followers. We’re particularly grateful to Dennis Kamprad and Impactful Ninja for his insightful interview which is already helping us build exposure and momentum. Take some time today to surprise somebody with some Valentine’s Day ❤.

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To learn more about “Will You Hear Me Now?” email us at info@willyouhearmenow.com. To help us with post-production and distribution of our upcoming film, please visit our GoFundMe and give what you can. To stay on top of our project in real time, check back here often. Follow us on Facebook and on Twitter/X.