Transmission Project

In addition to maintaining regular support to existing volunteers at the center, Mary met with existing partners to discuss potential additional programs:
• Project Farewell, University Presbyterian Church - G.E.D. program
• Inside/Outside Children’s Museum Art Program, Youth Web Design
• Arranged tax assistance dates with Tax Aides (formerly VITA) and Deloitte and Touche in February and early March; began advertising those dates in the community
• Family Literacy program, offered in partnership with REWA, two nights a week 4-6 participants per evening.
• Employment assistance offered by Neighborhood House employment specialists two afternoons a week.
• Intermediate ESL program, offered in partnership with the Seattle Literacy Council, two nights a week. Many participants are working with the goal of entering the G.E.D. class we are hoping to offer in early April.
• Talked with Student Nursing program to about creating a health related resource on RVLT website.
• Discussed RV Peace Pole project with Keesha Morris – explored funding opportunities for the project
• Researched available job resources for teens in preparation for a preliminary conversation on creating a youth employment services program at RV. Scheduled initial meeting for early March with Jobs Plus, RVLT, Boys and Girls Club, Youth Tutoring program, and Neighborhood House.

Held 2 tax nights with volunteers from Deloitte and Touche and 2 tax Saturdays with a volunteer from Tax Aide. All efforts were very successful! – 35 income tax returns were prepared for Rainier Vista residents. One additional tax day will be held on March 1.

Job Referral program and ESL courses continued in February. Both programs saw “slow and steady” upwards acceptance and attendance levels from the community. The ESL course expanded beyond its initial limit of 7 students, so a second teacher from the Seattle Literacy Council comes in during the same time to teach the additional students.

Due to limited resources, the sustainability plan for the CTC is to partner with agencies providing services needed by residents through agreements to provide facilities in exchange for those services. This is also meant to address resident concern about loss of funding for the employment program which included job search, job retention and wage progression activities.

In addition to all of this, Mary is creating the volunteer manual, which will include information on:
• the basic care and maintenance of the computers
• center rules
• troubleshooting
• typical skills and help requested of volunteers

America Connects Consortium Data Collection Curriculum project:
Mary has utilized her web and research expertise to identify and assess free online databases and tracking software for use in CTCs. Also through her need to assess data requirements under a new service delivery plan, she has acted as a wonderful model for coordinator concerns about data collection requirements for sustainability.

Fundraising: researched Fremont Public Association AmeriCorps VISTA grant and submitted the segments of the grant which she was able to complete to RVLT for approval and decision making needed to complete the grant. Because of an overload of work due to the change in leadership, RVLT decided this was not a priority. Mary is continuing to research additional grants for software and lab funding.

With respect to the VISTA project, it is Breakaway Technologies goal to assist individuals with 6th grade reading and math skills to increase their skills to ninth grade levels via our contextualized literacy program. To that end, we have developed a first draft of a scenario-based curriculum in collaboration with Carnegie Melon University, Bay ITC, and Cabrillo College.

Tabetha assisted in developing and is now working out the final bugs in the curriculum for our contextualized literacy program. She has submitted the curriculum to the American Association of Community Colleges and is currently awaiting feedback.

Tabetha has also assisted in developing partnerships with institutions in the surrounding area.

Sharon has shown only the utmost dedication to the Cyber Y and has helped nurture our afterschool programming into a highly successful and sought after community afterschool option for our neighborhood. The first class was an overwhelming success with high retention and participation from our local 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. This semester we added one day of programming and now offer Cyber Y afterschool for 3rd and 4th together and a separate class for the 5th graders.

In addition, Sharon has also worked closely with the Cyber Seniors class that meets once a week and provides ongoing instruction support and recruitment for the class. She also developed an open access time one morning a week in order to provide additional out of class time to participants to have more computer usage time. Starting with only a couple of attendees, word of mouth has quickly filled up this morning time.

Karen “Cookie” Sheers has provided amazing service to our Technology Goes Home program. She has been very organized and proactive. When I originally started my position in May 2003, Cookie informed me that our Alumni Committee was inactive. However she stated that she wanted to work hard to build the alumni committee and get it up and running. Originally out of the 86 families that graduated from this program, less than 2% remained in touch. To date, we have had a 10% increase in participants. This is partly attributed to Cookie placing personal telephone calls, and sending out personal letters to the families.

Cookie also has a childcare background and she is a very outgoing person. As a result many parents approached her regarding an after school program. It is because of her sharing their concerns with us that the Y.E.S program was developed and Cookie is taking the lead on this project. She is a tremendous asset to Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation.

Russell has worked directly with two technology workshops; one for younger children and one for the targeted youth aged 13-20 (7 participants). In the latter, he was directly involved in the recruitment effort and in both programs worked closely with the instructors to enhance their effectiveness.

Russell set up a digital video workstation (donated via MATV) and taught himself the iMovie software, working directly with the youth on the video they produced. He has taught himself a web design program (TrellixWeb) and has been teaching youth in the Center on an ongoing basis. We plan to continue the video course with the first group as well as offer the program to other youth.

Shubhada has educated herself about fuel cells through attending conferences, online research, and networking with engineers. She has begun to teach her peers and SETC users about fuel cells and is building relationships in the city to support her project.

• MIT and Roxbury Community College to support the program. RCC is buying three fuel cell models for the program.
• Boston Public Schools may introduce fuel cells in the eighth grade science curriculum.
• Nuvera will support program with tours for kids.
• Museum of Science interested in our efforts.

Our CTC classes ended with a great joy. Four of our citizenship students passed the test while two failed, and five students are waiting for their appointment. However with very limit number of computers and Internet, we were able to put together a fun computer class for all 20 adult students. These 20 students are now ready to type letter using Microsoft Word. Using all the skills they learned they are able to create letters, resumes, tables, and flyers. Only few of the older students are having problems remembering basic skills such as opening and saving files in Microsoft Word. Although most of the computers in the center are old, we were able to have at least 3 computers with Internet access. With great help from our volunteers, one on one tutor is so effective in teaching Internet skills to these students. More than half of these students are now getting online chatting with relatives in Vietnam and setting up email accounts. All of the ESL students are still shy to talk in English especially complete Standard English.

Kim Oanh has played a strong role in organizing and coordinating community events for BPSOS. She was a tremendous help in the coordination of various workshops that we have held throughout the year, the largest workshop which is a collaboration of 4 different ethnic groups (Vietnamese, Korean, Latinos and Muslims) on domestic violence which had an attendance of 300 people.

Kim-Oanh has coordinated and organized activities for youth at the Moon Festival. For youth and Senior Citizen at the Lunar New Year Festival at Virginia, Washington DC, Maryland. These holidays symbolize the heritage, culture, and life of the Vietnamese people.

She also organized the Carry Day for youths. She invited six speakers, she contact with 100 students and parents came that day.

Between the months of September and December, I worked with my fellow VISTA, Co Kim Oanh, and my supervisor, Bach Pham, to reaffirm community contacts by recruiting volunteers, outreaching to prospective clients, and acquiring space for a CTC. While Bach worked with BPSOS’s IT guy to acquire computers, I focused on recruiting volunteers to teach a series of Computer Literacy/ESL classes to current BPSOS clients. Through websites and phone calls, we recruited a small group of 4-5 volunteers that agreed to teach ESL/Computer Literacy combo classes.

Charlena helped to launched the new website in September 2002. It has been extremely helpful with fundraising and the recruitment of volunteers. Microsoft Access was used to create databases to track software, hardware, community and technology contacts, and student, tutor, and parent contacts. Each database has easy-to-use interfaces to update information.

Charlena created FOTS curricular resource binders based off of resources from Byte Back, SeniorNet, Triangle Coalition, Digital Newsroom, and a host of web-based programs. As a result, the FOTS curriculum is a pool of resources that can be manipulated and adapted to student need and class environment. Future VISTAS can rely on the curriculum binders and documented resources to create future classes.

Charlena assisted in keeping the computer center operated on a five-day week schedule. Basic computer literacy skills were addressed in computer classes and Open Lab. In the spring of 2003, classes concentrated on more advanced topics such as Lego robotics, Photoshop, spreadsheets, and web page design.