Rise & Shine Productions is the media literacy program of Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families, a multiservice youth organization. Rise & Shine creates opportunities for young people to develop communication, reading, artistic and leadership skills. The program started as a drop-out prevention program to motivate children to go to class and improve their academic performance through poetry writing, performance, scriptwriting and video production. Today, through The Real Deal, teens from diverse communities come together to produce their own cable TV program and independent videos on race relations, violence, drugs, materialism and the power of media. The teen production company members meet after school and during the summer and are paid for their work. Once they have selected a theme for a piece, they form production units to create the work. The cable show provides a regular venue for the work of Rise & Shine. Teens also return to the parks and neighborhoods where the videos were made to show them to the people involved and to discuss the content. Videos are screened nationally and are recognized widely for their quality and authenticity. The program reports a substantial impact on participants, with gains in school attendance rates, mainstreaming of special education and English-as-a-Second-Language students and college placement for many participants.