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As part of our current Neighborhood to Neighborhood workshop, a group of Rookies are reporting on the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policing policy in public housing projects on the Lower East Side. WNYC's award-winning reporter Ailsa Chang has reported extensively on stop and frisk. She met with Rookie Reporters Temitayo Fagbenle and Vincent Marrero to give them some ideas about how to deepen their investigation.

A recent New York Times article reveals that 41 percent of Mexicans in New York City between 16 and 19 have dropped out of high school, which is the highest drop out rate for any population in the city.   A few years ago Radio Rookies aired this story from Radio Rookie Christian about the extremely limited options available to him as an undocumented youth, even if he did finish high school and go to college.

Radio Rookies producers and Grad Rookie Rayon Wright are in London as part of the Hive Learning Network for the Mozilla Festival. The Festival brings together web and media makers to explore the frontiers of the open web. Young Londoners came out and learned to make audio podcasts, hack and remix boardgames and websites, become video reporters and design a digital hang-out space.

We're currently trying something new: running two simultaneous workshops and calling it Neighborhood to Neighborhood. In partnership with Facing History and Ourselves, Radio Rookies will be producing multimedia stories about their neighborhoods in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

Recent census data shows poverty rates are climbing all over the country and children are being hit particularly hard, with one in five of them living below the poverty line.  In 2009, Rookie Reporter Miguelina “Erikka” Diaz reported on how the stress of being poor affected her and her family as they struggled to pay the bills and find money for the extras that kids always need, like money for class trips and senior prom. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that more Latino children are living in poverty than children of any other racial or ethnic group.