What is Media Empowerment?

Media Empowerment means communities taking back the power to define themselves, their needs and their vision. It means empowering people with the knowledge and skills to make media work for justice in their communities by:

• Monitoring and making the mainstream media accountable around their framing of issues
• Participating in making media that truly represents themselves and their lives
• Ensuring ways to distribute untold stories and histories that create connections, unity and inspiration to demand a just world.

Mission

The Media Empowerment Project grows out of the United Church of Christ's historic legacy of dedicated involvement in the civil rights movement. The project began as the organizing arm of OC, Inc. in 2004 and is grounded in the belief that a powerful social movement is possible today and that media and communications are central to building it.

MEP is seeding locally-driven, innovative strategies in diverse communities to demand and build media justice. MEP sites integrate issues of media access and accountability into the existing organizing for basic needs and rights in their respective communities.