Media in Neighborhoods Group

Following the success of their celebrated U.S. Department of Justice-funded 2014 documentary Pull of Gravity, which followed three Philadelphia men returning home after incarceration, “Media in Neighborhoods Group (MING)” has launched a series of initiatives this year in its effort to use documentary film and other media for social change. With Knight Foundation funding, MING, founded by El Sawyer and Jon Kauffman, has grown its video production apprenticeship program for returning citizens. Additionally in May 2016, Sawyer won a prestigious two-year $100,000 grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to develop a program to train police, prisons and parole officers how to better reintegrate former inmates into society.