YO-TV is a ten-month pre-professional paid internship that jumpstarts the college and media careers of graduates of the Documentary Workshop.


We all know that you can’t get ahead in life without a good education, and a college degree is critical to success. And we also know that to get a job in the media industry, whom you know is just as important as what you know. That’s why volunteering as an intern at a production company or editing house is the best way for college students to get their foot in the door. But many youth who can’t afford to go to college or volunteer for free miss out on making these crucial connections and gaining these crucial hands-on real-work experiences. We started Youth Organizers Television (YO-TV) fifteen years ago as a way to begin to solve this problem; to give graduates from our Documentary Workshop a head start in their college and media careers.

YO-TV is a ten-month pre-professional paid internship that provides an opportunity for the most talented graduates from EVC's High School Documentary Workshop to work as paid interns producing a documentary for a professional client. Through this program, YO-TV members develop skills, contacts, and the confidence to bridge their transition between student life and the professional workplace.

Past YO-TV projects include: a nationally-broadcasted documentary for a PBS Bill Moyers series, a continuously-displayed tape at the Whitney Museum's 1993 Biennial Exhibition, a documentary on the international criminal court for the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, a documentary on financial literacy for The McGraw-Hill Companies and a documentary produced for the Brooklyn Museum of Art's exhibition, From Hip to Hip Hop: Black Fashion and a Culture of Influence. We are proud that YO-TV graduates have gone on to study at Hampshire College, Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland and many CUNY and SUNY institutions as well as work in broadcast, cable, and independent media such as CNBC, CNN, the History Channel, New York 1 News, PBS Point of View series and Manhattan Neighborhood Network.