The CE Experience

As part of Afterschool Awareness Month, we reached out to one of our Member Organizations for a guest blog post from one of their youth. Critical Exposure "trains youth to use photography and advocacy to make real change in their schools and communities". We are thrilled to have Desmond Cole, Jr. share his story this week.

I got involved with Critical Exposure (CE) in the summer of 2016 through the Mayor Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program. I was really interested in Critical Exposure’s mission of creating strong youth leaders that want to create change within their communities. Youth Internship is where CE teaches you the stages of a campaign, photography, and how to identify problems within your community. Fellowship is what you move up to once Youth Internship is over and it’s here where you start your own campaign on something we, as a group feel really passionate about.

Currently in Fellowship, we are advocating for Financial Literacy and Life Skills and wanting to have it integrated into District of Columbia Public Schools. We want to work on this because we noticed that a lot of young people coming out of High School and College don’t really know how to deal with money. We also wanted Life Skills to be integrated because in school, we feel like we aren’t being taught some of the things that we will need once we get out of school like filing taxes, getting a house, or learning how to write checks.


Being in CE, I’ve met some amazing people and done some amazing things with this program. I
learned how to take better photos and how to start a campaign and in the process became apart of a community where I can show up and be my full self in front of a bunch of likeminded individuals.

Thank you to Desmond and the rest of the Critical Exposure family. What are you and your organization doing to celebrate Afterschool Awareness Month? It's not too late to figure out a way to participate in this year's Lights on Afterschool event on October 26! Let us know in the comments.