As part of Black History Month, members of the Digital Griot Project gathered together at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto on Feb. 19 to view and celebrate the inspirational stories of local African Americans, stories lovingly recorded by high school student volunteers. Harris' late husband, Stanley, was one of the first luminaries profiled by the program.

"The oral histories they produce, they're so good and they're so interesting," Harris says. "I can't say enough about them. It's a fantastic project." The evening, which premiered a year's worth of work, also showcased such stories as those of African Americans being called to the ministry, joining the military later in life and dealing with cystic fibrosis.

"In African cultures, a griot is a wise man, a storyteller," says Anita Long MackFarland, one of the founders of the Digital Griot Project, which aims to bring that folkloric tradition into the 21st century.

The Digital Griot is part of the Sunnyvale-based Digital Clubhouse Network, which was conceived in 1996 as an offshoot of NASA. The program pairs technologically trained youth with those in the community who have interesting stories to tell but no computer knowledge for digital archiving. The youngsters compile photos, music and voiceovers for three- to five-minute productions, many of which are now stored in the Library of Congress for their historic value.

African American history is just one area where these multimedia productions focus their efforts. Other series have focused on cancer and the dangers of underage smoking, but the Griot features stories from all manners of African American life. There are similar programs for other ethnicities.

Harris learned about the Griot project through her job at the Sunnyvale library, where the director had taken part in a production on breast cancer. Much of the Griot's contacts come through networking, so when the producers heard that Harris' husband had been a Tuskegee Airman, the group clamored to record his story.

"It's completely necessary," Harris says. "These men are dying so fast, and their stories are going to be lost." Stan Harris' story details his experiences as one of the group of African-Americans piloting B-51 Mustangs as an escorts to bombers encountering planes piloted by Nazi Germany.

The Stan Harris piece, titled "Flying with Neeta," is now used in training for the Digital Clubhouse. MackFarland will soon travel to Washington, D.C, where Harris' daughter has gathered a number of Tuskegee Airmen in the hopes of recording their stories for the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in June. MackFarland will help train Senate pages in the Digital Griot methods to help with this archiving.

But the main force behind teaching the Senate pages this curriculum is Jo Lin, a senior at Homestead High School and the Digital Clubhouse's national youth director, who has been with the group for nearly six years. She's just one of a number of teens who have deeply involved themselves in the organization. "Each production is wonderful for the person who's had it done, but it's also about a young person sitting down with someone they might otherwise never meet," MackFarland says. "They get immediate gratification by being able to see their own work and get recognized by the community."

The volunteer youth spearhead each part of a production, from creating a script to storyboarding to working with Adobe Premiere to create the film on the Clubhouse's donated Hewlett-Packard computers. MackFarland says she got involved with the Digital Clubhouse because she was concerned that many young people were not learning about such technology, much like Brian Givens, now a junior at Homestead and co-founder of the Digital Griot Project.

"It can get really emotional," he says, describing the stress of discovering that a presentation's audio has blanked out or that there are other technical difficulties. Givens joined up with the Digital Clubhouse in middle school, and though his involvement is mostly within the Digital Griot—he served as co-emcee at the Hewlett-Packard event—he'll likely take over for Lin after she enrolls at Barnard College in New York. There, she'll work with the Manhattan Clubhouse, the group's other main location, in just one example of how involvement with the group has offered its members many new opportunities.

"I'm in a place where I may have to step up," Givens says. There are dozens of adolescents throughout the area who are currently involved, and more than 10,000 people between the ages of six and 96 have been part of the Digital Clubhouse since its inception.

For Givens and Lin, involvement has been easy—until recently, the clubhouse was located in the Towne Center Mall. According to the group's founder, Warren Hegg, the ownership at the Town & Country Center has allowed them space there for the time being.

However, it may not be a long-term solution, so while corporate donations continue to come in, the focus of the Digital Clubhouse might soon shift to San Jose, away from its origins in Sunnyvale, unless another spot can be secured.

But at the Digital Griot showcase, hometowns don't seem to matter, and neither do ethnicities. When MackFarland calls all the young filmmakers to stand, students with African American, Caucasian, Asian and Indian faces all rise. "This is not just a black thing," she says. "There's such beauty up on that stage. It's all people, and that's the most wonderful thing to see."