Nuevas Novelas: Media Literacy to Prevent Violence

Dear Donors,

Thanks to your support over the years, we’ve grown Nuevas Novelas into more than a filmmaking program. It’s become a powerful space where Latina, Chicana, and Indigenous girls and nonbinary youth explore their stories, build confidence, and reclaim their perspectives through media. In our last cohort, we integrated an environmental justice focus, and it was a huge success. Our participants tackled issues like land stewardship, community gardening, access to clean water, and public transportation, and brought attention to the challenges facing their communities while imagining a more just and sustainable future.

Beyond training and mentorship, we support our youth filmmakers in identifying and accessing opportunities to put their films in front of audiences, paving the way for a future career. An example is “Native Plants,” a documentary created in the last cohort of Nuevas Novelas, which was nominated by Justice for My Sister for inclusion in the Color Congress and Elev8 Media Youth Distribution campaign and premiered at our Justice for My People Film Festival in April 2025. 

Now, we’re excited to share what’s next: the 2025 edition of Nuevas Novelas will focus on oral history and intergenerational storytelling, giving young women in the San Fernando Valley the tools to preserve their elders’ stories on film. With your help, 15 girls and nonbinary youth at Vaughn High School will be trained in interview techniques, cinematography, audio recording, and editing. They will be mentored and supported by Justice for My Sister to create powerful short documentaries that showcase the wisdom and resilience reflected in stories of Indigenous elders and immigrant families.

We’ve already secured a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs to launch this project, but there’s a catch: it requires a 1:1 match. That’s where you come in. Your donation will help us meet this match and continue teaching young women the skills of storytelling, collaboration, and cultural preservation.

Your belief in this work keeps us going. Please head to our page to double your impact or consider giving $10/month to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. 

Thank you for being part of the Justice for My Sister community.

With gratitude,

Justice for My Sister team

Dear Generous Donors,

With the previous cohort of Nuevas Novelas, we expanded our media literacy and leadership program by incorporating an environmental justice component, and it was a big hit! Building on that success, we are working to bring forth our next cohort in 2025 to serve Latina, Chicana and Indigenous young women from immigrant and working-class families. 

The 2025 edition of Nuevas Novelas will include workshops on oral history and interview techniques, cinematography, audio recording, and editing. These workshops will equip participants with tools to create documentaries with a lens of oral history and tell elders’ stories in their communities in the form of video. 

The program will begin with a gallery installation of “My Grandma Taught Me to Pray”, a documentary exhibit directed by Justice for My Sister’s Executive Director, Kimberly Bautista. The screening will be followed by a roundtable discussion of the importance of creating documentaries with the aim of preservation of Indigenous culture and history. Kimberly’s film, which chronicles her Latinx-Indigenous ancestors, will be an effective tool to connect with participants and encourage them to register to create their own documentaries through our workshop series. 

Fifteen students will be selected to partake in the workshop series that follows the installation. As a result of the workshops, participants will create videos with mentorship from Justice for My Sister, which will then be screened for our community during our Justice for My People Film Festival in spring. Please consider joining our mailing list or follow us on Instagram for a chance to attend our annual film festival. 

The new edition of Nuevas Novelas aims to preserve and document the personal narratives of Indigenous elders around their relationship to the land and their reclaimed ancestral ways and create a connection between the audience and these histories.

Our youth are passionate about making a meaningful impact in their communities and beyond. By equipping them with the skills and tools to tell their stories and those of their elders, we empower them to be agents of change, preserve history and celebrate culture. With your help, we can continue to nurture their growth.

Please make a generous donation to our Nuevas Novelas program today and help us continue fostering an environment of growth, artistic expression and community.

Sincerely,

Justice for My Sister team