School Site Manager
Organization:
The Media Aid Center VISTA Name:
Michael Matthews
Program Start:
1/2007
Program End:
1/2009
Project Description:
Currently the Media Aid Center provides during and afterschool digital media production courses for five high schools in South Los Angeles supporting large underserved and disadvantaged communities. The center supplies mobile media labs and studio facility to support community engagement and youth involvement activities.
The school site managers will be in charge of recruiting, training, supporting, scheduling, and recognizing non-AmeriCorps mentors and volunteers. The developer will ensure the appropriate orientation and accommodations have been made for each site to make volunteers within their Media curriculum. This includes developing field trip curricula and mentor-lead exercises as a part of the Media curriculum. The site managers will act as liaisons and mediators between the sites and the school. Media instruction will be framed as a tool to facilitate academic achievement, community involvement, exploration and expression.
Project Outcome:
The website remained incomplete. Some of the problem was the delay in training Mike properly. Mike acted as site manager at our main facility. This freed our staff to massively exspand our capacity from 100 students to 700 students per year. He planned and accompanied students on field trips. Mike also developed a website for us. He began a music develop project by converting one of our older computers into a beat machine.
Originally, web development was Mike’s primary task, but it is his work as a site manager that made the difference. It began with an outreach program to community schools. The schools stated they needed the program during school not after, and we have been growing fast ever since.
Impact Quote:
“Music was not a priority for our center, but it is a major part of Mike’s vision. When he began to build the beat machine, the program began to attract at-risk youth that were out of reach to the center before.”
- Martin Cheeseborough, supervisor