I Hear You: An Audio Storytelling Program For Teens (Fall 2025—Spring 2026)
Day/Time: Tuesdays, 4:30pm—6:30pm
Dates: Sept. 30, 2025—May 7, 2026
Students: 9th—12th Grade
Get paid a $350 stipend!
Location: 546 9th Street, Oakland, CA 94607
Chapter 510 prioritizes Oakland-rooted BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students by creating a space and a place for them in our free programs and workshops. We acknowledge the effects of gentrification in Oakland and also welcome youth located in surrounding areas.
What calms you down when you feel stress? How do you want to feel connection in your life? What is happening in your community around mental health and wellness that you care about?
Join us for our new teen audio storytelling program where you will go on a journey to explore your own relationship to mental health and wellness and document stories from your community around important issues that matter to you.
Learn to interview, write scripts and record all the elements needed to create compelling audio pieces about mental health and wellness. No experience is necessary — just curiosity and a willingness to explore the world through sound.
To listen to audio from our past podcasting programs, click here.
Teaching Artist Bio:
Elena Botkin-Levy has worked at the intersection of audio production, education and media-making for over 20 years. With a focus on amplifying queer voices as a storyteller. Elena started in community radio and learned that holding space, asking questions and documenting is powerful. Drawn to oral histories as an opportunity to map our own narratives, she founded GEMS Oral Histories & Audio Storytelling to support individuals and communities in saving and honoring stories that matter. Working with institutions such as Women's Audio Mission, YR Media (formerly Youth Radio), outLoud Radio, ZUMIX Radio, Elena has led educational programs in the audio sector with a focus on creativity, innovation and change-making. Elena is an alumni of Temple University where she studied in the Geography Urban Studies and Education departments.