The 2014 participants with Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) – Photo courtesy NGLF
The Next Generation Leadership Foundation (NGLF), a locally-based national nonprofit dedicated to mentoring and cultivating potential LGBT leaders, announced on Feb. 3 that it will be accepting applications for its second annual Leadership Institute. Held each summer, the institute brings up to 25 LGBT students from around the country to Washington for a week of programming designed to help foster leadership skills and establish networks with successful LGBT community leaders.
“This is a unique program in our community,” says Sean Bugg, NGLF’s founder and executive director. “We know LGBT youth still face barriers, stereotypes and stigma. The Leadership Institute is about showing youth that they can succeed not despite being LGBT, but because they are LGBT.”
“We want to make sure that young LGBT people can do whatever they want in life, without feeling limited by their upbringing, their circumstances, or stereotypes.”
This year’s institute will be held from June 22-26 in Washington, D.C., and will allow the youth a change to meet with leaders from Capitol Hill, the White House, entrepreneurs, and leaders in various fields including art, technology and community activism. NGLF pays for participants’ travel and lodging expenses. To be accepted to the summer institute, interested LGBT youth must submit applications, which can be found on the NGLF website, by Mar. 6. The program is restricted only to those who will be 18 years old as of June 21, 2015. Selection criteria for admission into the institute includes a student’s academic record, community involvement, and an essay or multimedia submission on how selection for the program will impact their lives as LGBT people and their future career goals.
“We want to make sure that young LGBT people can do whatever they want in life, without feeling limited by their upbringing, their circumstances, or stereotypes,” says Bugg. “We put them together with people can show them how to achieve their own hopes and dreams.”
Bugg notes that even though space in the program is limited, he wants as many people to apply as possible. He also hopes to expand the program in future years to accept more students and expand the institute’s offerings.
“When you look at the agenda we put together for last year, it’s really an incredibly broad, deep and exciting agenda,” says Bugg . “The depth and breath of what we’re offering is really unparalleled. I’m very excited we’ve been able to create this opportunity for young people.”
Tyler Getchell of Jacksonville, Florida, has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting and partially paralyzing his neighbor, Kyle McFarlane, during an argument over what Getchell believed was trespassing.
McFarlane told police he was gathering discarded furniture for a bonfire on November 22 when Getchell and his girlfriend came outside and yelled at him to get off their property, First Coast News reported.
According to the police report, video footage shows McFarlane standing on a property easement -- not on his neighbors' land -- just before the shooting.
When Martha Nell Smith was a child, she was given a book called The Golden Treasury of Poetry. "I was a nerdy kid, I liked to read," the 72-year-old academic says, adding, "I also liked to play. I was a very sporty kid too. I was a tomboy."
The book contained several poems by Emily Dickinson. "I thought these look so simple, but when you think about it, they are really weird," she says. "But you could say that about almost any Dickinson poem."
Smith recounts the long and winding path that led her to become one of the foremost experts on Emily Dickinson, with a particular focus on the poet's secretly romance-laden letters to her sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson.
Documentaries generally don't need an onscreen host. The camera can play host, and real-life stories can tell themselves, with offscreen prompting from research and production, and shrewd direction and editing providing context.
If a filmmaker wants to put the prompting onscreen, there's a delicate art to inserting themselves or an on-camera host into the story without stealing the spotlight from their subject.
Ryan Ashley Lowery, director and creator of the LGBTQ doc Light Up, is anything but delicate in inserting himself and two on-camera host-interviewers -- Michael Mixx and Maurice Eckstein -- into the film's still-compelling portrait of Atlanta's "community of Black same gender loving men and trans women."
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