“I wasn’t born into wealth; I wasn’t born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes but I kept at it,” President Obama tells America’s youth in the documentary “Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper,” premiering Sunday on the Discovery Channel and Oprah Winfrey Network.
The documentary, featuring snippets of an interview with Obama throughout its 48 minutes, highlights four programs created in response to Obama’s challenge to mayors and municipalities to launch programs aimed at helping young people and minorities stay safe and become productive adults.
“We have a generation that if it hasn’t been lost, it’s at least been shunted aside,” Obama says in explaining why he created the My Brother’s Keeper initiative last September. “I want to make sure that we seize that moment.”
The program “allows people to interact with young people who otherwise they may only see through the filter of stereotypes,” Obama says in the opening over shots of young men taking the initiative’s oath and participating in program activities.
The film features Urban Prep Academies, based in Obama’s hometown of Chicago; Baltimore County’s Halstead Academy of Art and Science; YouthBuild’s northern California program that focuses on young people living in rural areas; and Chicago public schools’ anti-dropout, violence-prevention Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man program.
Despite stereotypes of young people in baggy pants and tough-talking, disenchanted youth, most of these young people just “want safety and to be loved — and that’s not heard often enough,” Obama says in the documentary.
The documentarians interviewed Obama May 18 in Camden, N.J. The movie’s simulcast premiere is scheduled to coordinate with Father’s Day.
