THE STORY.

SYNOPSIS
REMIX TO RIO is a one-hour Documentary that explores the mindset of today’s disadvantaged youth and the gap that has grown between those in need of support and those who can provide it. As at-risk youth in our communities reject the traditional modes of outreach aimed at them, we find a growing group of young people in need of support but without the ability to accept it in its current manifestation. Traveling with Canada’s most innovative youth outreach organization to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro we watch them test their outreach model on some of today’s most “unreachable” youth.

THE STORY
REMIX TO RIO follows Gavin Sheppard, Drex and the REMIX team as they travel to Rio De Janeiro and join forces with Sandro, an Ex-drug lord turned activist for community outreach NGO, IBISS.

We watch this unexpected partnership unfurl as they bring the REMIX model to Rio and construct a recording studio for disadvantaged youth in Sandro's Favela, Terra Econtrada (The Enchanted Land).

Gavin and crew also bring three of their brightest students to Rio. The HUTUZ Hip-Hop festival will be in full swing and will set the scene for the REMIX kids to test the skills they’ve been honing over the last 6 months.

Most of these kids have never traveled outside of Ontario, let alone over seas. The culture shock they experience and the perspectives they gain will be life changing.

Interviews with REMIX and IBISS Directors, HUTUZ Promoters and an EX-General from one of Rio’s most notorious gangs are interwoven with the kids’ journey to uncover the specific contexts of these young people’s problems and to provide solutions to disadvantaged youth scattered throughout the world.

VIDEO---WHAT IS REMIX?

Click it.


Hi-Res DIVX version now available:
http://stage6.divx.com/user/ravisteve/video/1729615/What-is-REMIX-Project?

REMIX PROJECT is a youth-led urban outreach project based in Toronto. Moving into their 7th year, REMIX is a bona fide Canadian success story. A story that remains largely untold.

The brain child of 25 year old Gavin Sheppard, Kehinde Bah and Drex, REMIX PROJECT provides the space, support and resources for “at risk” teens to change their circumstances.

The project works. They have a growing success rate that has attracted the interest of similar minded groups around the world.

REMIX to RIO??? Gavin Explains.

Gavin breaks down the Brazil Trip.


In mid November of this year, Toronto’s frontline urban outreach project REMIX will join forces with Brazilian NGO IBISS.

This global partnership has plans to test REMIX’s outreach model in an inner city slum of Rio De Janeiro.

IBISS is a massive Community Pillar in Rio. They do so many amazing things it's impossible to list them.

WANT MORE?
Read the article the Toronto sun did on Sandro.

(copy and paste in URL window)
http://www.torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGTA/2007/10/08/4559092-sun.html

IBISS WEB SITE: http://www.ibiss.info/

REMIX to RIO?? Sandro explains.

Sandro talks about the Studio project.

Sandro is an activist with IBISS and was in Toronto last week to see how REMIX works it's magic.

Direct translation from clip:

"Now, many of the young ones are getting older, and younger ones are arriving. What do we do now with the older ones? Do we say "thanks for coming, nice having you. Do you remember what you've learned?".

So this idea clicked with the one that of the REMIX program cause in Brazil the youth have been very into hip-hip music and Brazilian funk. Which is a great epidemic. So we got the idea from REMIX to build a studio in the centre so the kids can graduate with the opportunity to find jobs in the fields of video, photography, machine operator. So we’re doing the venture with REMIX to see if we can take and apply these ideas we are seeing with the REMIX program and bring it to Rio. Which I’m sure the youth will appreciate. More importantly, turn them into good citizens. That’s our intention!"

Much thanks to Sid Melo for the translation.
www.myspace.com/blackcornersent

THE "KIDS"

Meet some of the REMIX Participants.


Calling these people "KIDS" is a bit ridiculous. The program "leaders" are only a few years older than the participants. But lets face it: For graphics purposes, "The KIDS" looks too good to pass up!!!

RIO's YOUTH.

The problems Rio's kids and our youth in Toronto face are at once vastly different and disturbingly similar.

The level of frightening violence Rio's poverty stricken youth face is far more extreme than that of our Toronto youth and yet we find the bleak futures they share are too often too similar. Can Rio offer us a glimpse into the future we are headed for?

What can our Toronto youth learn as their eyes are opened to the harsh realities facing their Brazilian contemporaries?

Interviews with some of Rio's Frontline outreach workers will help shed light on the similarities and differences facing our youth as well as illuminate underlying causes for the problems facing our young people at home and abroad.

Please see Our Toronto Participants' bios and pics below.

What does Toronto stand to gain from such a trip?

As jobs shift overseas and expanding corporations downsize to maximize profits, we are left with an ever growing gap between the haves and the have not’s. Low income communities suffer and criminal related activities worsen. Directly related to these socio-economic conditions new environments thrive that promote drug trafficking, gang growth, and increased murder rates.

Increased police presence and tougher laws do not improve these situations and the Canadian government has turned to innovative organizations like REMIX in order to find alternative solutions to alleviate these inner city ailments.

Remix has been invited to Rio by IBISS, a similar grass roots organization, to participate in a collaborative project and to share ideas and solutions for problems facing their inner city communities.

Rios “favelas” (slums) are some of the worst in the world. IBISS has pioneered new programs and created effective solutions that REMIX can learn from and apply to Toronto’s parallel problems.

This film is a chance of a lifetime, an opportunity to document the coming together of two revolutionary organizations and to capture the sharing of ideas and possible future cornerstones in community development that will be established once these two groups meet.

THE PLAYERS

Gavin Sheppard is the founder and project coordinator for I.C. Visions—North America’s first government-funded hip hop recreational centre. Having founded the innovative community project at the age of 17, he is proud to announce that I.C. Visions has recently celebrated its sixth anniversary in July of 2006. Re-titled and refocused as “The Remix Project” in that same month, this newest evolution of the I.C. Visions program, has become both an official priority of the Mayor's Community Safety Secretariat and the United Way of Greater Toronto. The Re-Mix model continues to build on the I.C. Visions foundation, highlighting the impact of urban entertainment and culture as tools for engagement and empowerment, and introduces elements of hands-on training and mentorship into the mix. It is through the Remix Project that Gavin has also founded Remix Micro-Credit, a micro-credit program focused on serving the young people currently involved in remix or alumni of the program.

Constantly involving himself in opportunities to further the cause of the arts and alternative education, Gavin is currently serving on the board of directors of Schools Without Borders (SWB) – an innovative non-profit that introduces young people to diverse cultural and life-skill-based learning opportunities around the world. It is through SWB that he has been involved in facilitating exchange programs with young people from the slums of Toronto, Canada, to the favellas of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and building a community-recording studio in Havana, Cuba.

Sandro is a former drug lord. At one time a general in the Red Command which is Rio's largest Drug Cartel, Sandro was the general in their headquarters running a million dollar a month operation. A long time soldier in the drug trade he was thrust into leadership when his older brother, the general before Sandro, was murdered by the police in front of him. The coroner's report said there was over 70 individual shots in his brothers corpse. Sandro took control after that but he knew that this wasn't the life he wanted to continue for himself and for his young family (his daughter is about 4, beautiful and maybe the only person more arrogant then Sandro in the slum they live in). Eventually he reached out to IBISS through one of the programs in his neighbourhood and after a series of tentative and casual negotiations finally formally left the drug trade and became immediately enrolled into a management class through IBISS to run community initiatives. Now Sandro has always been a boss, and Sandro will always be a boss, what this fact of life means for his current incarnation is that he is now in charge of a million dollar social project in Terra Econtrada (Enchanted Land) which offers breakfast programs for school aged youth, barber programs, a residents union in their slum and is about to build a recording studio as a social entrepreneurial venture. This recording studio will house a recording arts program similar to that of Remix and will also act as an income generator for the community centre as they rent out the studio to local groups in order to raise money to support things like their breakfast programs. Remix is a partner in the construction of this studio. We will be donating materials, equipment and during the trip our expertise and people power in physically constructing it.

Derek "Drex" Jancar - Resources & Administrations Coordinator at REMIX. Drex's bio available on his myspace or website. www.myspace.com/drexinkredible & www.drexinkredible.com, www.myspace.com/therawluckmovement

Tyrone Edwards (Co-founder of Concrete Hoops, also works at Remix as the Business Program Coordinator. Bio and more info available at www.concretehoops.com , www.myspace.com/ftp21, www.myspace.com/getatremix

The "Kids"

Roxanne (Video and Photography - youth participant www.myspace.com/roxan_ , www.myspace.com/getatremix). Roxanne is a dreamer. She is a perfect mix of self confidence and self conciousness. Convinced she is ordinary with nothing to say but driven to capture and express the less then ordinary in a manner that is articulate in it's visuals and vivid in their descriptions, Roxanne is a very interesting young woman. A burgeoning photographer and "self-proclaimed director", she is drawn to stories of life and culture. As a young woman of colour she is determined to navigate the male dominated industries of music and film on her own terms and through her own ingenuity and strength. Roxanne will be in Brazil documenting the trip for Remix and working with Media Arts programs in The City of God and Terra Econtrada. Roxanne is from Yonge and Finch (Willowdale).

Houman "Ricki" Bekzadeh (Rapper - youth participant - and now youth member of our board of directors www.myspace.com/ricki1, www.myspace.com/getatremix). Born in Iran, his family was forced to leave their mother country during the revolution (when his father's life was directly threatened) to find peace and a better life in Canada. Ricki is a young man well acquainted with urban poverty, crime and the traps associated with both. A charismatic young leader in his community, Ricki's Teesdale neighbourhood was identified as a priority area for investment for the city of Toronto thanks to it's complete lack of social infrastructure, huge youth population and rampant crime and violence. He is a forward thinker whose mentality is currently focused on improving the situations of his friends and family. He sees this task in the light of by any means necessary. Ricki will be in Brazil helping to construct the recording studio in Terra Encontrada and performing his own original music at HUTUZ the largest hip-hop festival in Rio de Janeiro.

Thomas Bui (Visual Art & Graffiti - youth participant www.myspace.com/getatremix ). Thomas is a quiet young man who is perpetually taking in the world from under a low fitted cap and a wary perspective. He is a creative soul and besides being a talented illustrator he has begun designing and selling his own clothing line, Tragic Glory. From the community of Regent Park, Thomas is determined to transcend Canada's largest government housing complex through his originality and his artisitic skills. He will be in Rio as a visual artist taking part in the Graffitti aspect of the festival and also in the fashion trade show aspect trying to make links for his clothing line and find partners in Brazil.

Cover for our Package that is Currently out to Broadcasters and Funders.

Packaged PDF will BE available for Download shortly.


Gavin: