YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Born and raised in Youngstown, Tiffany Sokol is proud of where she's from.​

What You Need To Know

  • As the home of a booming steel industry, Youngstown was once the city for those reaching for the American Dream, but then the steel manufacturers shut their doors with 40,000 being lost

  • The day the biggest manufacturer closed became known as "Black Monday" and the city is still recovering

  • A new documentary by PBS called "The Place That Makes Us" takes a look at a new generation of young people who want to flip the script about their hometown

"I live in Youngstown. I live in this community. So whenever we do work here it's not just, you know, it's not just coming in and helping somebody but it's actually impacting my neighbors and impacting my life by impacting those neighbors," Sokol said.

Sokol is the housing director at Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation, which works to transform blighted neighborhoods into areas where people and businesses will invest.

"Our mission is to improve the quality of life in the city of Youngstown. Specifically, the city's neighborhoods," she said.

Sokol and a few of her colleagues are featured in a documentary airing this month called "The Place That Makes Us." It was filmed over three years by PBS and explores how Sokol and others choose to stay in their hometown and help rebuild it rather than relocate.

The idea actually started with a joke from Sokol to one of the directors.

"I was taking her around to different houses and I joked with her that I always thought that we should have our own HGTV show because I think that what we do is really important and I think that our product is really beautiful. And I think our homes are just as nice as what you see on those shows but it's also for a much deeper cause," Sokol said. "And so I thought it would be a really cool thing. And I was just kind of just dreaming a little bit and joking with her and she looked at me real seriously and said, 'Well, why would it have to be HGTV? Why not PBS?"

That conversation turned into a film exploring the work Sokol and her colleagues are doing to keep Youngstown alive.

"We do a variety of other neighborhood improvement activities including basic cleanup, grass cutting, boarding up vacant houses, and even healthy living and eating programs," Sokol said.

While the documentary focused more on each of their personal lives, Sokol said she hopes others will see what she loves so much about their city.

"I want people to know that Youngstown is home for me and it's home for a lot of people. And for us, it's a wonderful place to live. And for me, and for many of us, we see the potential for the city to only continue to be greater even than it is now," she said. "So I just want people to see this is not a place where people are stuck or where, you know, no one wants to live because I've chosen to stay here and many of us have chosen to stay here."

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