Transmission Project

The VISTA will network and meet with collaborating, partner, and support organization in Brookline and the Boston area and provide those organizations with guidance and technical assistance in media and technology program development. Develop a volunteer recruitment and management program for BATV, website support and development, and grant writing and research.

The Corps member would provide the leadership and passion to coordinate and guide the many people who want to get involved with national Radio Project Currently, we are blessed to have a fairly steady stream of volunteers, yet we lack the capacity to coordinate the volunteers effectively. The Corps member will also play a critical role in reaching out to more economic justice groups who can advise us on key issues. We have been wanting to cultivate these relationships to deepen our beat, but have lacked the capacity to do so. The Community Engagement and Volunteer COordinator will play a vital role in our organization: managing volunteers, reaching out to grass roots economic justice organizations, and organizing events and house parties, with the support of other volunteers. They will deepen our networks among 3 major constituents: 1? Volunteers, 2) Donors, and 3) Grassroots Allies.

The Corps member will serve in a vital outreach and engagement role that is necessary to boost community engagement work in our new broadcast service area. The Corps member will also serve as a liaison between the radio station and the community during this critical time of community engagement.

The VISTA will assist in the implementation of a broadcast radio facility in the Sonoma area in which Common Frequency and Freemind Media each have FCC NCE construction permits for. The VISTA would take the lead in interfacing with the local community to find people and non-profits interested in producing content for the new radio facility. They will then train these people and arrange the on-air schedule/automation. In addition, they will give consultation and network with other new radio stations CF is aiding. The overall goal is to create a grassroots radio content repository that represents regional topics and issues not covered by corporate news with the intention of giving voice to underrepresented demographics resulting in democratic civic improvement.

The VISTA regional collaborative coordinator will manage the initiatives determined by the staff and board of MAP and the other participating stations around sharing specific technology, educational curriculum development, new/social media and PEG management practices. The VISTA will work with CMAP’s Executive Director Kathy Bisbee to increase outreach to regional media centers, continue collaborative efforts with existing partners created during the first VITSA year and implement new technology, marketing and fundraising strategies with both current and emerging collaborative partners.

To fulfill this role, the VISTA will be required to coordinate monthly conference calls and regional meetups; utilize social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies as effectively avenues of communication and education modules between centers; define the roles of each media center in collaborative efforts; schedule site visits to each center, document conversations between centers and determine best practices; identify thought leaders and innovators within the industry; and incorporate new insights into the existing cookbook for regional collaboration.

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.

In relation to the Comprehensive Broadcasting Plan, the Corps member will be responsible for researching current radio technology and preparing cost/benefit analyses for the Board and gathering information about the operations of other community media centers. The Comprehensive Broadcasting Plan would be the priority for the first half of the year and laying the groundwork for the media center would be the focus of the second half of the year and laying the groundwork for the media center would be the focus of the second half of the year. To support the media center concept, the Corps member will gather information on the needs of the community, reach out to organizations/individuals to build partnerships to help meet these needs, determine what each organization has to offer and at what level they would like to participate. The Corps member will also assist in developing a marketing plan to familiarize the community with the new services/trainings/events that will be available at the media center. Working closely with the Station’s promotions committee, the Corps member will assist with organizing two fundraising events to build awareness and raise funds to support the center’s growth. A grant proposal for local funding will also be developed.

The Corps member will build on relationships staff create with local school partners, community-based groups, non-profits, corporations and funders to develop strategies and resources (volunteers, computer donations and funding) for community technology adoption programs. Specifically the L@TCH home computer program which distributes computers to the families of K-12 students that are attending Baltimore City schools.

BAVC developed the Neighborhood News Network Project in order to take advantage of the high-speed fiber optic network that connects the local public acces, educational, and government channels to nearly fifteen community sites throughout San Francisco. It has the capacity to support live video streaming and high resolution file transfer from any connected site. In the initial n3 pilot, BAVC will focus on three unique organizations and the constituencies they serve.

The Digital Arts Service Corps member would serve a central and defining role as Project Manager in building and launching the neighborhood news network project, with complete focus for one year on building, implementing, documenting, and evaluating the project, in a way that no current staff member could do without letting their essential duties drop. The Corps member wold be responsible for identifying San Francisco neighborhoods, organizations, and programs that could most benefit from the added capacity of tools and skills required to share relevant, timely, and hyper-local news and information with each other, to conduct research, outreach, documentation, and evaluation tasks, and subsequently to implement a pilot program in a successful, sustainable, and replicable way with guidance, input and participation from BAVC staff and our community partners.

Our VISTA will help to launch a new hybrid radio/web media project serving high-quality news and features to community radio audiences in the Seattle area. The VISTA will help design and support a project workflow for recruiting news and information providers, organizing news producers, and preparing content for publication. The VISTA will help recruit and coordinate volunteer radio and media producers from regional community radio stations to host and produce programming. The associate will help create and maintain relationships with partnering media outlets, help maintain a project website, and help deepen network relationships among innovate grassroots, community and ethnic media outlets in the Northwest

The VISTA will also work with the project manager and RTM to conduct outreach to participating news outlets looking for weekly/daily news to feature, to maintain the project website, and the conduct community outreach to help promote the project.