Despite the fact that we live in a fast-moving technological age of social networking in which Facebook can serve as your own personal marketing page, the young women working in the Girls Make Media summer education program at the Santa Fe Community College are embracing yet another media venue in which to express themselves.

"It's about young women using media to find their personal voice," program coordinator Monique Anair said of Girls Make Media, a one-week intensive class for women and girls from 14 to 24 that took place at the college last week.

The nine women in the class include seasoned actresses, fledging filmmakers and novices. The all-female staff gives the students lessons in acting, haiku-writing, makeup for the camera, storyboarding and editing.

The program culminates in three media projects for participants as each one makes a video self-portrait, a team video project with another participant and an all-group video piece.

According to Anair, the program started in 2000 at the former College of Santa Fe under the direction of Deborah Fort. With Fort's blessing, it moved to the community college in 2007 with Anair — co-chair for Media Arts and Film at the college — at the helm.

"The program allows young women to expose a part of themselves that they don't always let others see," Anair said.

Brianna Thomas agrees. The 19-year-old community college student said she likes the "learning by doing" aspect of the class. She enjoys being a role model to the younger girls in the class, and she in turn looks up to the older women as mentors.

Being in a same-gender educational setting makes her more comfortable to be who she is, she said: "You can divulge things you might not divulge in a coed class." Storytelling in any form — including via digital media — is a way to "show the vulnerable truth of human nature," she said.

One of her classmates, 24-year-old Amanda Creech, said Girls Make Media is an "eclectic program touching on many subjects in a very fast pace. There's no time to be bored."

Of the all-women environment, she said, "I try to hard to push away from the notion of, 'Oh, a woman artist,' but this week has allowed me to connect with that feminine aspect of my art and not push it away. So it can be something that I choose to pull in or push away."

Last Wednesday, the women were working on developing a fictional character — one who may or may not embody some real-life traits of the creator. The women used cut-out images from magazines, pens, pencils, markers and other art materials to lay out personality traits on a colored piece of construction paper. The next day (Thursday) they would be coming to class to act out these characters, and by Friday these personalities will have worked themselves into one or all of their video projects.

Albuquerque author Carolyn Handler Miller visited the class Wednesday afternoon to discuss storytelling in the digital age. She gave the students a brief overview of her own professional background (which included work as a journalist in New York City) and urged them to break into male-dominated industries with, "There is nothing you can't do just because more males are doing it than females."

She said she had to teach herself how to adapt to the booming digital-media craze over time. "I wish I had a chance like this to learn about media," she said of the program.

Visit www.sfcc.edu for more information on the college's media programs.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com