Curricula Development and Program Building
Organization:
Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth (CAPAY) VISTA Name:
Molly Higgins
Program Start:
9/2009
Program End:
9/2011
Project Description:
While being involved with some of CAPAY’s youth/community/media programming plans, our proposed 2009-2010 VISTA member, will primarily be responsible for enhancing CAPAY’s current and future organizational capacity
Goal 1: Activate and mobilize CAPAY’s alumni network to provide increased/ongoing resources
Goal 2: Using Web 2.0 tools to support and streamline organizational communications, mapping of organizational assets (including alumni networking), and outreach/promotion.
Goal 3: Initiate and nurture long-term organizational partnerships in addition to shorter-term project-based collaborations.
Goal 4: Develop assessment and reflection tools with which to document short-and long-term impact of CAPAY program and project participation on youth participants, community members/organizations, and CAPAY alumni
Goal 5: Expand CAPAY’s financial base, including earned income, donations, and grant development.
Molly’s main role in the 2010-2011 service year will be to collect and organize pre-existing content, produce some original content, and produce/package training materials for staff and volunteers to take over the project. This includes archiving CAPAY’s collections of resources and workshops and digitizing them for the CAPAY website and also developing a training curricula that could potentially be used as a revenue stream for CAPAY in the future. The VISTA will also partake in fundraising and grant writing for the program.
Project Outcome:
our VISTA member goals for 2009-2010 were: - Provide staff support to assist organizational members in convening and revitalizing the CAPAY Alumni Network. - Develop community partnerships and collaborations, including youth/community internship sites, to build sustainability of the program into future years. - Develop grant/funding proposals and enhance CAPAY’s funder networks in conjunction with CAPAY staff and Adult Advisory Board. - Organize grassroots fundraising events for CAPAY programs. - administer/maintain CAPAY’s website and Web 2.0 presence (e.g., updating Facebook, Youtube, Google maps, etc) while exploring possibilities for online revenue streams and other relevant sources of earned income. - Develop assessment and reflection tools with which to document short-and long-term impact of CAPAY program and project participation on youth participants, community members/organizations, and CAPAY alumni. Molly was successful in implementing Web 2.0 tools to support and streamline organizational communications. She took over the management of CAPAY’s communications, including CAPAY’s Facebooks and listserve. She worked closely with the CAPAY coordinator Tri Quach to integrate Web 2.0 tools into the new CAPAY website. This includes the development of CAPAY’s media portal, designed to gather Asian American media such as digital stories, blogs, and artist websites (including original CAPAY content). She also worked with one of the CAPAY youth to develop a city-wide blog for youth organizing. Molly made progress in initiating and nurturing long and short term partnerships with other organizations. This includes the promotional video she made with other UMass Boston students for MASAE, a local basketball team. She successfully planned and administered all of the CAPAY YouthLearn internships at other organizations, including UMass Boston’s Asian American Studies Program, BCNC, AACA, ATASK, AFH, and Close to Home. Molly re-established connections with CAPAY alumni, the Alumni Network, which has been meeting actively since June to develop fundraising initiatives and to provide planning assistance and support for the November 2010 CAPAY youth symposium. Molly developed several grant proposals that are pending review.
Molly’s organizing and facilitation with these other Asian American youth programs led to the creation of a Steering Committee (SC) representing the Asian American Civic Association’s Youth Center, the Asian Community Development Corporation’s A-VOYCE, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center’s YouLead, and the Chinese Progressive Association’s Chinese Youth Initiative, along with CAPAY. This is an unprecedented accomplishment in terms of Boston Asian American community youth capacity-building and provides an organizational framework to foster programmatic collaboration and coordination, shared research and advocacy, and joint grant submissions.