Notes from Susan: Guess Who’s Coming For Dinner

Notes from Susan: Guess Who’s Coming For Dinner

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Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner

By Susan MacLaury

Growing up, my favorite TV show was a series called “Father Knows Best” about the Anderson family, who demonstrated weekly that parental interest, sensitivity, and humor could help kids resolve any issues. Decades later, the non-profit I head Shine Global, has been excited to co-produce “Onyx Family Dinner,” an 8-part series featuring parents Rita and Mirthell and their teenage children Shasha, Sinaead, Shalom and Shiloh. At the Onyx dinner table, feelings are spoken and there are no wrong feelings. And unlike the sitcoms of my childhood, these family conversations promote collective sharing of deeper concerns. Everyone feels supported in this kind of family environment.

My own upbringing had been disrupted by my father’s death when I was five. Soon after my stepfather entered, a good man with a bad drinking problem. Far from the closeness of the Onyx family dinners, ours deteriorated predictably every night. Our dinner table wasn’t a safe space to talk about our days’ experiences or to voice our opinions without the risk of personal attack. We lacked a coherent family identity and eventually my siblings and I experienced serious bouts of anxiety as we entered adolescence.

We were apparently in good company. According to the Pew Research Center, the number one problem faced by kids is anxiety, which has increased by more than 20% in the past 15 years, followed by depression, drugs and alcohol, and bullying (including cyberbullying). When we then consider the added impact of COVID-19 on families’ wellbeing – the social and financial deprivation it’s caused coupled with the fact that many adults and kids have met social isolation with increased use of personal technology – the rise in anxiety is understandable.

For more than 40 years, I worked in prevention as a social worker, therapist, and college health education professor, all of which taught me to appreciate the potential of family support for kids’ physical, emotional and social growth. During much of this time, I focused my attention on the positive influence of group support on middle and high school students. I authored a book on advisory groups and collaborated with 12 public schools in New York City and Newark, NJ to create or build their existing programs. Often called “family groups,” these sought to replicate positive family experiences by providing students the chance to explore their personal feelings and social interactions in a safe, confidential environment led by teachers, counselors, and other school staff who were trained and supervised weekly in group development.

My belief in the power of kids’ resilience and the importance of families in developing it also led me to co-found Shine Global in 2005 with my husband, Albie Hecht. In the past 16 years we’ve made 15 films and digital series about underserved children and families who model resilience and hope. These films have aired in more than 50 countries and have been used by schools, after-school programs, and families to start discussions and inspire action.

We’ve worked with many different types of families across the globe and every family has its own set of rules. Imagine if we set the expectation that eating dinner together, at least three nights a week, was a rule and no, phones are not allowed. It’s necessary for us all to have a chance to talk about our triumphs and defeats, explore the problems we face and seek advice on how best to deal with them. Over the past 30 years, many research studies have underscored the benefits of sitting down to dinner at least a few times weekly with family. Pre-teens particularly benefit from eating more nutritionally, decreasing their likelihood of developing eating disorders. They generally experience fewer behavioral problems and achieve increased literacy. These results in turn are linked to reduced rates of depression, suicide, drug abuse, and early sexual activity among teens, and achieving better grades in school overall.

Watching the Onyx Family confirms how precious a resource a loving family – however one’s family is defined – is in enabling its members to feel confident about their loveability and competence. Rita and Mirthel are strong, smart, loving parents who genuinely listen to and learn from their children. Their family embodies an essential balance between privacy and openness to positive outside influences as needed to educate and support its members. The latter is essential because any family can find itself confronting new and difficult problems and need outside help addressing them.

In these days of increasing anxiety, all of us could use the support and comfort of regular dinners with our loved ones, be they families of origin or those families we’ve created.

Dr. Susan MacLaury, PhD, LSW is the co-founder and Executive Director of the non-profit media company Shine Global which gives voice to underserved children and their families by telling their stories of resilience to raise awareness, promote action, and inspire change.  She executive produced the Academy Award® Winning documentary Inocente, the Emmy Award®-winning, Academy Award®-nominated War/Dance, as well as The Harvest (La Cosecha), 1 Way Up in 3D, The Eagle Huntress, Through Our Eyes: Homefront, and Liyana. She is also the producer of the documentary films The Wrong Light and Virtually Free and co-producer of Tre Maison Dasan. Susan is dually degreed in social work administration and health education and was associate professor of health education at Kean University from 1994 through 2013.
The Onyx Family Dinner is produced in association with Shine Global.

Shine Global is an award-winning non-profit media company that gives voice to children and their families by sharing their stories of resilience to raise awareness, promote action, and inspire change. We produce inspiring films and compelling content about at-risk children. Through tailored distribution and outreach, we connect with our audiences in communities, classrooms, museums, and on capitol hill as part of a powerful engagement campaign to encourage social change.

 

 

Download Companion Discussion Guide

Shine Global offers a free, downloadable family discussion tip guide as a resource for families.

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

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Notes From Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

I was happy to read “Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers” in the New York Times. 

It documents the 71% decrease in teen detention rate changes in Indiana’s Tippecanoe County from 2013 to the present, as its 400 police officers took a course called “Policing the Teen Brain.” The program, offered by Strategies for Youth in Cambridge, MA., focuses on adolescent development, the effect of trauma on teen behavior, and de-escalation and listening techniques, all of which have reduced the number of arrests of teens significantly.

The county has gone further – offering teens at risk substance abuse and mental health counseling as well as anger management training. There is also a companion program, “Parenting the Teen Brain,” to help parents better understand and respond to their kids’ behaviors to prevent them from calling police to intervene. This is essential, points out program director Lisa Thurau, because detention has disastrous effects on teens’ ability to graduate from high school, go on to college, get a decent-paying job, and it is also another source of trauma for that child and his family.

In 2017-2018 Shine Global made the short documentary, “Virtually Free,” in Richmond, VA. We filmed teens in detention working with local artists to create art that expressed their life experiences. Part of the filming was of local police undergoing a 1-day training in adolescent development, the effects of early childhood trauma, and the impact of detention on the physical and emotional well-being of teens as depicted in the virtual jail cell they created with local artists to describe their personal experiences. “Virtually Free” is now showing at the Heartland Film Festival Shorts Program as well as in schools, community programs, juvenile justice programs and police forces across the country.

We applaud Lisa, her program “Strategies for Youth.” and the thousands of police officers in dozens of states who’ve gone through this training. Helping a police officer to reframe a teen’s behavior as expectable rather than threatening encourages them to respond with curiosity and concern rather than force, and everyone wins.

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

Notes from Susan: Celebrating The Courageous Young Bystanders Who Filmed George Floyd’s Murder

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Notes From Susan: Celebrating The Courageous Young Bystanders Who Filmed George Floyd’s Murder

By Susan MacLaury

Like many of you, I followed Derek Chauvin’s trial on charges that he had caused George Floyd’s death nightly on the evening news and was watching when the verdicts were announced yesterday. I was relieved that the center held. The jury accepted their very difficult challenge and demonstrated the grace necessary to agree on the verdict of all three charges against him.

Also, like you, I watched the actual incident itself as it unfolded last May 25th thanks to the footage shot by young bystanders and the news outlets that broadcast it. Most notable was that filmed by a 17-year old, Darnella, who begged police to stop suffocating Mr. Floyd. She and another young woman, Alyssa, kept their phone cameras steady throughout the incident. 

They and others who saw the murder up close have been called “the first jury.” We are all indebted to them for the concern and courage they showed, including the young female EMT, Genevieve Hanson, who approached police to offer her assistance resuscitating them only to be blocked by one of the other 3 policemen.

I remember the first time I saw this footage and watched Derek Chauvin look directly at the camera, expressionless, as he ignored Mr. Floyd’s pleas. I said to my husband: “My God. We’ve just watched a man be murdered.” And, also like many of you I suspect, my greatest fear was that he’d get away with it, that like all the deaths of unarmed Blacks before and since, Chauvin would be protected by the blue wall.

Beyond the elation that this did not happen and the hope that possibly Black Americans can finally anticipate equal protection under the law , I want to express my gratitude to the filmmakers who documented this nightmarish event. They were young, frightened, and angry, but they held their position and in doing so helped to invigorate the Black Lives Matter movement, the most significant collective effort since the Freedom Riders of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Shine Global salutes Darnella, Alyssa and other witnesses – and all documentary filmmakers worldwide – who care enough to make sure the world sees the truth.

Take care,

Susan MacLaury
Executive Director and Co-Founder of Shine Global

 

 

 

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

Notes from Susan: The Power of Rohingya Art

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Notes from Susan: The Power of Rohingya Art

By Susan MacLaury

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to travel to Kenya and Uganda with a non-profit called AMREF (now AMREF Health Africa) as part of the filming of War/Dance. One of our stops was in a Masai village in the heart of the savannah.

 In that village, women assumed the roles of health educators who taught how to reduce the likelihood of trypanosomosis (“sleeping sickness”), often carried by tsetse flies traveling on cattle, by encouraging villagers to keep them in pens on the outskirts of their settlement rather than its center. Because they were largely illiterate, they did this through song and dance, using a colorful banner with drawings to make their point. At one point one of the dancers pulled me to my feet to join them. I still remember my daughter falling backward off the log she was sitting on because she was laughing so hard at my efforts to imitate them.

 But I digress.

 I was reminded of that day over the weekend after reading a moving article about a Rohingya artist and refugee, Mohammed Mur, who along with hundreds of thousands of others from the Rakhine State in Myanmar were forced to flee to avoid being murdered for being stateless Muslims. One can only imagine the trauma they experienced at what they endured. 

 Most ended up in camps in Bangladesh, where they’ve been living under dangerous,  overcrowded conditions. Mohammed lives in the Balukhali Camp, site of the Artolution arts program. He is one of several refugees who have found a way to confront and share their traumatic experiences through art. Equally helpful, Artolution artists also have learned to use their talents to convey public health messages, much like the Masai women.

 The power of art to express hope is undeniable. We at Shine Global are so grateful to have the opportunity to bring the Rohingya crisis to the forefront of global consciousness through our support of “Hossain,” the feature length documentary directed by Taimi Arvidson and produced by Brette Ragland. Shine Global will do all it can to ensure that this film becomes one more way the Rohingya can educate world leaders and create positive solutions for the pressing need to resettle more than 700,000 of them safely.

Take care,

Susan MacLaury
Executive Director and Co-Founder of Shine Global

 

 

 

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

Protecting Those Who Feed America: Coachella County Vaccinates Farmworkers

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Protecting Those Who Feed America: Coachella County Vaccinates Farmworkers

By Susan MacLaury

There’s very welcome news out of Coachella Valley, CA, one of the most important agricultural areas in the country and now the first county in the US to bring the COVID-19 vaccine directly to farmworkers. This is a huge development for those who feed America, especially since it’s available to all, regardless of whether they’re documented. It ensures that workers who might otherwise not have been able to schedule appointments, or travel to keep them, will be safe. To date, thousands have been vaccinated at pop-up vaccination sites in this effort co-hosted by food growers and the local health department.

Traditionally, those who lack citizenship have been fearful of applying for any type of US governmental programs. The vaccination program, which began in January, took months of planning and community organizing to assuage fears among workers both about the vaccine’s effects as well as possible legal consequences of being vaccinated. It’s being hosted by local growers and the county health department.

This move is essential as in some areas of the US more than 40% of farm workers have tested positive for the virus. A recent study by Purdue University found that more than 500,000 have tested positive and 9,000+ have died.

These are the families we documented in The Harvest (La Cosecha) in 2010 with the support of executive producer Eva Longoria. Just today, one such young worker, Gianna Nino, is the subject of our “Shining a Light” series.

We are proud to add our voices to those who publicize the sacrifices made by hundreds of thousands of migrant working families who labor under harsh conditions for little pay, suffering the effects of pesticides, farm injuries, extreme weather, and very poor living conditions, often also worrying about possible arrest and deportation. Here’s to Coachella County and the hope that many other local governments will follow their example.

Susan MacLaury
Executive Director and Co-Founder of Shine Global

 

 

 

Notes from Susan: Police Don’t Know Enough About Teenagers

Notes from Susan: Let’s Hear it For Hope!

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Notes from Susan: Let’s Hear it for Hope!

By Susan MacLaury

Hi Everyone,

I hope this letter finds you safe and well. As you know, every year we send out a video describing what we’ve done. If you’ve not yet seen our 2020 videos, I hope you will and in fact… here’s one of them now:

I love it, and am especially moved by Dominic, one of the three young protagonists of our first film, War/Dance, who recalls how during the darkest days of civil war and threats by the Lord’s Resistance Army, when families were forced into overcrowded IDP camps to survive, he had only hope. And it was enough.

Our capacity for hopefulness has been sorely tested this year. In my personal efforts to mitigate this, I’d forward videos to friends that I hoped were inspirational/funny. I think overall they enjoyed them but some made it clear that while they appreciated my optimism, they didn’t share it. I understand this but wish they could, because I’m with Dom… we’re nowhere without hope.

Hope is the core of the work Shine Global does – from the films and series we create, to the educational materials we write to extend their reach, to our film and Q&A series that we hope brought thought-provoking beauty into our viewers’ lives.

To all of you who’ve donated to Shine Global this year, taken the time to let us know you’re with us, that you, too, have hope…. thank you.  If you’ve not yet donated to Shine Global, please consider doing so now. We have exciting plans for expanding our storytelling to include both animated and scripted films and we’d love for you to be part of our continuing journey.

And let’s continue daring to hope in 2021. Albie, Alex and Sean join me in sending you our very best wishes for a spectacular new year.

Take care,

Susan MacLaury
Executive Director and Co-Founder of Shine Global