Transmission Project

John is a big part of our growth from 25 to 35 organizations.

Three program directors have told me almost exactly: “Without John, I wouldn’t have learned how to update my websie.”

Karl has proved indespensible in helping our organization understand who our membership is and how we are serving them. With direction, Karl has developed a weekly and monthly statistics aggregation (our dashboard) that illustrates our level of community support and involvement. He has also developed many systems in our database to help us better communicate with our community through direct email and web publishing.

Lauren has been an integral part of ensuring a year- round, sustainable youth media program. She has been developing policies, researching, compiling content for the Youth Media Block and leading several of the outreaches and youth- media classes. The VISTA has also been vital in assisting the Education Coordinator with her duties such as classes, curriculum development, and community outreach.

Renae has collaborated with city and county agencies to create strong strategic alliances with the PINK HOUSE. She keeps on top of the changes and new programs that are provided by these agencies and continually keeps in touch with the community leaders to inform them of the programs being implemented.

Though I always come up with the purpose of the event, Renae never ceases to amaze me in the way she plans and prepares for an event. She coordinates, decorates, handles the media, finds the volunteers through programs set forth in her prior years of service from creation to completion of the event.

Through these hard times, Renae still continues to get our local community businesses to commit to the children and the community. She keeps in touch with our partners. She continues to create, implement, and maintain our technological programs for the youth using service projects.

Renae also worked The College of Charleston public relations department and was instrumental in our center receiving a team to create branding for the center as well as a solid volunteer base through the program they created.

The third grade class was in charge of creating the newsletter for the center this term. They had to select the team themselves. She monitored as they elected a editor, decided who would be the photographer, journalist etc.. Each child was given a job. They learned skills in creative writing, photography, making advertisements, team organizing and working together as a team.

Emilio developed a detailed deployment plan for a free community Internet program at Castle Square using MIT Roofnet mesh networking software. He recruited and trained two Castle Square resident youth and six Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) students to assist in the deployment and outreach to the community. He did outreach to residents about the opportunity to participate in the project and the availability of technical support. He led the team that installed and configured customer premise equipment and provided training and technical support to enable residents to join the wireless network.

Additionally, Emilio enhanced cooperation among the first Boston area nonprofit housing development efforts to experiment with WiFi wide area networks by such means as: 1) Played a central, hands-on role maintaining and upgrading pre-existing wireless networks in collaboration with Madison Park Development Corp. (MPDC) and the South End Technology Center (SETC) at Tent City. 2) Convened meetings at Castle Square of representatives of the City of Cambridge, Mass Housing, MPDC, SETC, CSTO and BFIT to share experiences and plans, learn from each other and devise ways to assist each others’ work. 3) Held a series of outreach/training events to share our results with other housing developments.

Emilio Flores, serving as an AmeriCorps*VISTA Member started some months after the project was initiated but it didn’t really get rolling until he came on board. He took the lead in organizing communications with the 120 families that joined the network and in arranging for them to be served by the free wireless Internet. In doing that, he managed a team of resident youth, work-study teams and volunteers. He played a principal continuing role in monitoring the network and working to improve its performance. Emilio served as chair of a distinguished advisory committee that worked to enhance communications among existing and developing housing-based wireless projects in Boston and Cambridge and awarded $10,000 in grants to support such projects. He also took the lead role in organizing presentations about the team’s work.

As a graduate Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech the technical requirements of his position were quickly mastered. In addition to the technical aspects of the project James had worked in the area of community engagement as a regular as part of his responsibilities. The community is primarily Latino, many of which are recent or first generation immigrants. The biggest hurdle for James in this area was the language barrier as James was not conversational in Spanish. The opportunity and challenges in this type of research network abound. Regardless of these challenges, James was highly successful in increasing the range and scope of services we can offer the residents of these areas and his presence will be missed from both in the interpersonal arena as well as his technical proficiency.

To quickly review Jennifer’s first quarter initiatives, her project included research into the demographic makeup of the city of Cambridge, preparing a significant report on ethnic and language identity by zip code of our community, and identifying organizations in our community to build relationships with to better serve our city. Jennifer’s second quarter worked to increasing member production rates and values by fostering and mentoring two member production groups; one group for the support of active producers working on individual productions, and the next a group focused on cooperatively producing a current affairs program.

Jennifer has also been responsible for a couple of community television events. These are events that, without CCTV and the hard work of our interns, would not have made the nightly news.

In the fourth quarter, a new initiative was born and Jennifer became the supervisor for our Summer Media Institute, a youth media program operated here at CCTV in collaboration with the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program. The Mayor’s office runs a program each summer placing teenagers for six weeks in various host sites with the intent to provide structure, job training, and income for youth in the city of Cambridge.

The twelve teenagers placed with CCTV undergo a rigorous media training program including digital camera and editing techniques, documentary and fiction production, software and other hard skills through project-based workshops and weekly screenings. This program empowers our twelve Cambridge youth each year with the ability to produce media that more accurately reflects their lives and experiences in our city. This program is several years old and graduates continue to return for our services and facilities in their independent media work.

She is currently helping to organize, write, and format BNN’s quarterly newsletter, our most important piece of literature sent to our members. The newsletter introduces new equipment in our facilities, editing and production tips, and production class schedules. BNN has been unable to produce a newsletter since last winter, due to lack of staff and time, so Alli’s assistance in this is especially crucial. Once the newsletter is completed it will be mailed to approximately 500 members and BNN typically receives a positive response from a large number of recipients.

Another example of Alli’s reach to the community is BNN’s Neighborhood Network News Program Highlights which Alli has been in charge of for the past six months. The Program Highlights require Alli to be in close contact to all of our producers and to contact various shows on a weekly basis. The Highlights also require her to send out a bulk mailing each month encouraging producers to contact her and let her know about their show, so that BNN can assist them in reaching as many people in the community as possible.

Not only is Alli reaching out to community members, but during the next six months a lot of her attention will go to reaching out to community organizations. BNN provides non-profit organizations in the Greater Boston area a chance to produce a PSA highlighting their organization’s cause. Alli will be responsible for the production and editing of these PSA’s, and she will assist BNN’s Education/Outreach department in contacting the organizations through phone calls, mailings and most importantly a “Get Your Message Out” seminar.

Over the last six months Alli has been a vital part in increasing BNN’s reach to the Boston community. She has kept daily communication with many of our producers and the productions that she has assisted on have gotten her out into the community and aided BNN in delivering community messages.