Transmission Project

Erica made a good start on fundraising with the development and distribution of our annual appeal letter sent in Dec. This was fairly successful for our first try and raised over $1,500. During that time she was able to pull the current databases together, add new donors and businesses. All of that was in preparation for merging into the donor management/fundraising software HandyCapable had purchased. The next large piece was the planning of the first “event” for our organization which was well on it’s way by Dec. 2006 and planned for April 2007. Erica also send out a business letter to help raise awareness of our program, the need for donated computers, volunteers and funding.

Tony successfully created a project plan, lesson plans, program write-ups and evaluations for programs in the past year. These programs provide valuable skills to students in the following areas. Photoshop- design and tools, , Movie making, Robotics, Music Making, Diversity training, Literacy enrichment, Web Design, Graphic Design/Arts and the Techathalon (a state wide event). The Americorp Vista participated in outreach and recruitment with several community groups. He secured several donations for fundraising efforts through community relations he developed. During the past year, he visited the Young Champions program and urged them to participate in after school programs at the club site, greatly increasing the size and reach of our programs.

In developing OLLIE’s digital distribution strategy, Gariet has achieved three major accomplishments.

First, Gariet brought the OLLIE program and Portland Community Media into the Youth Video Exchange Network (YVXN) as a steering partner. OLLIE’s participation in YVXN has allowed us to share broadcast quality student work with other youth media centers around the country, as well as acquire youth media content to broadcast on our own channels.

In parallel to his work with NYMAP, Gariet also researched and set up a blip.tv site for the OLLIE program. This site allows us to share our videos with others at any time, and in turn allows our visitors to post the videos on their websites and blogs.

Finally, Gariet developed a website for the project using the Drupal content management system. This site provides a comprehensive resource about the program for the communities we serve, and includes a searchable video database. Through his research and work with Drupal and blip.tv for our youth project, Gariet has set a course for the Media Center as a whole. Recently a staff member expressed that Gariet’s ability to explain the benefits and values of these technologies to others led to the media center to develop a digital distribution plan that incorporated the lessons he has learned. Gariet’s work has also had an impact on the larger community, including interesting and attracting a local foundation to provide operational funding for our project.

The Closing the Digital Gap (CTDG) program was fortunate to train nearly 500 Lansing area residents, approximately 240 in the Michigan Works Internet job search program, 139 in our core computer give-a-way program, 72 in the Computer Literacy program, and 45 in the our Web Page Creation class. Staff and volunteers exceeded their six month training goal from February to August of 2004; nearly every staff received over 25 hours of additional training — our partners Michigan State University and New Horizons Computer Learning Centers were responsible for the majority of training.

Amy Radigan was very instrumental in the marketing, recruitment, scheduling, processing and teaching of All Closing the Digital Gap programs, especially those programs held in the Magic Johnson Lab. Amy did the initial intake of all perspective participants including following-up on messages about programs, creating and disseminating program information, and assisting in the instruction of various CTDG classes.

Amy assisted in expanding one of CTDG’s programs pertaining to bridging the Digital Divide for the developmentally disabled (dd), using her contacts from a previous job to disseminate information to other organizations that work with the developmentally disabled. Through her efforts, CTDG not only trained more dds but offered on the job training to 3 dds and hired another dd.

Shaneka served as the lead in hosting several major youth centered events, including the Intel regional teen summit and the college tour. Recently Shaneka has worked in areas of project and grant development and assisted in managing several major programs and helping with the outreach and marketing of our programs.

In her Second service year Shaneka continues to work closely with the teenage youth and is currently hosting a Girls program for teens ages 13 to 18. The youth are currently involved in forming their own T-shirt corporation from the ground up. Shaneka has helped the youth write business plans, design images for print, and worked towards building an entrepreneurial mindset in the youth. Shaneka continues to develop technology related programs that have youth learning Photo Manipulation using Adobe Photoshop, Animation using Macromedia Flash, Video Production using Sony Vegas and other programs that engage the youth.

Ross was required to wear many hats during his work with CUWin. On the technical and external side Ross work closely with CUWiN developers and local activists to implement CUWiN software in our domestic network sites—setting up wireless access points in areas that community members had identified as key sites. He helped install and troubleshoot network nodes in Champaign and Urbana and develop manuals and instructions in order to provide technical support to local residents and partners to help maintain the local wireless network. Internally, Ross worked closely with the CUWiN core staff to facilitate the growth of the CUWiN project. This showed itself in our growth and the development of our leadership and advisories boards and the partners we have developed.

Elisha manages the Inland Northwest Memories project, an online history archive funded by Humanities Washington. This includes outreach, training, and writing, as well as fundraising and project development. In addition, she works with staff on other projects as needed.

Elisha trained 20 small community museums in the digitization of their collections. She developed a video on the importance of small museums in preserving community history, which has been shown at a number of sites. Elisha is also conducting a seminar series, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to familiarize secondary school teachers with the events leading to the passing of women’s suffrage in Washington State. She has drawn in a number of new community partners for this project.

In light of Elisha’s success, we have decided to make her a member of our staff after her second year of service.

Richard assisted the education department with youth outreach curriculum development efforts, developing innovative ways to expose community youth to digital audio and video technology. He developed interest surveys for school and community info. gathering and assisted with the implementation of an open house for CMC Wealthy neighborhood residents. Richard was a member of the SMART Festival planning team, an international student media arts festival organized and hosted by GRCMC..

A particular story that stands out is the use of audio resources and curriculum developed by Richard: There was a young man named Patrick who was 14 years of age and lived across the street from Media Center with his Mom and 6 brothers and sisters. He would drop by the media center often after school. He learned a variety of video production skills and produced a few short studio productions for air on community television, but nothing seemed to really stick with him. One day we asked him to produce and record a rap that could be used for promotion of the Mollie youth program. You could see the excitement in his eyes at that suggestion. In a matter of weeks he had the rap written out and beats to use with it created on the computer. Using the tools and resources Richard had collected and organized, we were able to both find a passion for this young man and help promote our programs and organization.

Misty was instrumental in developing community resources for every county in Washington State from the grassroots up. She has been instrumental in designing the website in order to better organize resources and make them available to our states residents. Misty single handedly developed the quick, one click away to community resources for each county. By July over 43,000 views of needed services were logged on the website, making it the number one resource listings provided to help people. Misty was also very helpful in marketing the website and making sure individuals were aware of the database. She helped design informational brochures and distributed them to state organizations to give out. Lastly Misty was very successful in collecting and distributing valuable resources, of note was a dozen laptops which she not only acquired, but setup up for our programs, increasing the number of people we can help.

The VISTA was active in having the Cyber Café become a full VITA(Volunteer Income Tax Assistant) site, successfully passing an IRS review. The VISTA was helpful in finding and bringing together resources for users of the Cyber Café and developing our educational resources.