Transmission Project

During the first six months of 2008-2009, Janet was instrumental in producing several new training and curriculum resources — some content-rich and some with the purpose of media/technology application/integration. These included an extensive draft curriculum centered on the historic local Chinese burial grounds of Mount Hope Cemetery that included production of three new digital stories.

She provided critical programming leadership in the organizing of a major Asian American youth symposium in November 2008 that included workshops on Media Justice, Web 2.0 resources, digital storytelling, Asian American history, and community activism.

She also constructed an important database of active Asian American youth and Asian American educators from the metro Boston area.

During the final six months, Janet focused on the launching of the Dorchester Youth Initiative (DYI) — a CAPAY-led program to address critical issues facing Vietnamese American youth and their families and community in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Janet designed much of the content-rich curriculum with an emphasis on youth/community media. Given the limited capacity of other Vietnamese American community-based organizations to focus on youth issues, Janet also worked to establish crucial relationships with a range of community partners, leading to the organizing and documentation of youth/parent forums in the community. She was primarily supported by the CAPAY coordinator, Tri Quach, and a team of three bilingual Vietnamese American college students from UMass Boston whom she recruited as volunteers to help with the launching and implementation of the DYI.

Janet was not able to devote as much time/effort to the fundraising aspects listed in the position description as we had initially hoped would be possible. She did assist with one major fundraising event (an Asian community dessert tasting held at the Vietnamese American Community Center in Dorchester that benefitted CAPAY and other collaborating organizations). She also researched potential funding sources and developed a useful outline for new funding proposals, but did not actually submit any completed proposals during her term of service.

Elizabeth has assisted the education department in all of the stated areas, and has built a solid framework for a sustainable youth channel program. She launched the Youth Media Club, a new program which has attracted new youth to Media Bridges. She produced several videos with elementary school students as part of a 20-week outreach class at a local public school, which initiated an ongoing partnership with the school. She applied for a $1,000 grant to fund our summer camp program. She recruited two high school interns through a media internship program for minority high school students. She also established Media Bridges as a partner organization for a media career exploration program for high school students sponsored by an association of journalism professionals. She developed a youth policies and procedures handbook for Media Bridges, opening the door to more youth involvement in the future. She expanded the youth channel from a four hour block of programming per week, with an additional youth block timeslot for college student productions. She structured the youth page on the new web site, manages the content of the page providing information about the youth program to the public, and has also developed social networking outreach through Twitter, and avenues for video distribution through youtube, vimeo, ListenUp, and local youth filmmaking site IndieViz.

Establishing a youth leadership board was part of our original plan for the youth channel, but that was not completed. The initial lack of youth involved with the organization made that difficult and also unrealistic at this time. Elizabeth has been able to recruit youth participants, which will pave the way for a youth leadership board in the future. There has not been a full-scale volunteer management system put into place for the youth program. Although Elizabeth recruited volunteers and worked with staff to improve volunteer procedures, the Media Bridges volunteer management system is in the process of restructuring, so a youth volunteer management system was put on hold until a better structure is implemented by the operations department. In the meantime, Elizabeth has worked to create opportunities for youth volunteers and has streamlined youth volunteers into the overall volunteer process

Although it was not originally included in the project proposal, Elizabeth created, designed and maintained a youth section on the Media Bridges Web site, created social network outreach (Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook) and established additional distribution methods for youth-produced videos online, through video-sharing sites. At the beginning of her service year, the Media Bridges Web site had no information regarding youth programs and was not being updated because we were in the middle of a redesign. When the new site went live, Elizabeth became active in overall site maintenance, specifically in creating the youth section

The VISTA conducted research into best practices, implemented the findings, and prepared monthly reports of social media participation data (twitter followers, facebook fans, myspace friends, etc). As a result, the VISTA has significantly expanded our social media outreach on MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. The VISTA also worked with our food pantry manager to develop a blog to raise awareness, funding and food for the food pantry – see ffon.tumblr.com for the result. The VISTA conducted a social media use study of other nonprofits in St Bernard Parish, Louisiana, and a preliminary study of social media use by nonprofits in the greater New Orleans area that are doing the same type of work as the Community Center (long-term disaster recovery) has also been completed. Data from these 2 studies is currently being analyzed and the findings will be used by our next VISTA to further develop the social media strategy used by the Community Center.

The VISTA prepared 2 short videos which the Development Director integrated into the end of the year fundraising campaign (both available at www.youtube.com/ccstb), including the “Thank You” video which was the cornerstone of this campaign. The VISTA produced a 5 minute overview of the Community Center and a volunteer testimonial (all available at www.youtube.com/ccstb). The VISTA also compiled a CD that contains a comprehensive introduction to the Community Center of St Bernard. The CD includes video footage of hurricane Katrina damage to St Bernard and surrounding parishes, used by permission of levees.org, along with statements from the Community Center’s Executive Director, and a 12 minute video shot entirely by the VISTA that has interviews with key Community Center staff and details both the services available at the Community Center as well as ongoing needs. This CD is distributed to Community Center donors who give more than $25 as well as offered for sale for $10 to the more than 1,100 volunteers from all around the world who come to the Community Center annually. The 12 minute video will also be a key component in the various fundraising tours that the Executive Director is planning for coming months.

Activity 3, the online giving catalog, proved the most challenging of all the tasks undertaken by the VISTA. Deciding on items to include and whether to structure the catalog as a retail sale (eg buy t-shirt with the Community Center logo and part of the sale price goes to the Community Center) vs a sponsorship sale (buy a hot meal for 40 people for $10 or 200 lbs of rice for the food pantry for $50) was the first challenge. In the end, after a review of what other non-profits are using, a sponsorship sale based on that used by Heifer International and the World Wildlife Federation was chosen. The next step was coding this catalog, including setting up a shopping cart that automatically generates the ability to choose from a variety of “thank you” e-cards for the purchaser after the sale is complete. We are very grateful to the VISTA for his dedication to the project and his willingness to develop his technical skills which enabled him to finish this complex project.

Anne has been invaluable to PCF and has helped us grow as an organization. She, with support from myself as well as Nick Reville, has taken Miro Community from an early-stage project to a fully-fledged platform that is serving many communities.

Anne is beginning to work on making Miro Community a self-sustaining pillar in PCF’s arsenal. She has began to develop a userbase that will support the project with monthly fees and/or contracts.

Anne has started work on a miro community site that aggregates feminist video content from all over the web. It has began taking a life of its own and has been written up on feminist blogs and in Bitch Magazine.

In addition to completing most of the assignments originally envisioned for John’s year with New Entry, John completed assignments which went well beyond the stated goals in the original proposal. In addition to the three workshop videos to be included in the online curriculum, John developed a Seedling Training video for on-line curriculum use.

The sustainability of John’s contributions will remain significant, well into the future. In addition to developing solid working curriculum for on-line use, John developed important foundations upon which New Entry curriculum can expand. John established a formula for production of workshop videos, on-line curriculum videos, and Farmer-to-Farmer Moments. This formula will be repeated with each new video which is produced into the future. John also converted our lending library of VHS tapes into DVDs to both extend the shelf life of the videos and make them available to clients with DVD players. John also participated in outreach activities and made important partnerships throughout the area.

Christy helped out with programing, including a monthly show called Talking About Somerville. She set up the lighting and manned (womanned) a camera and then edited the peice together putting titles and credits and music to it.

Christy attends local events around Boston interviewing and filming the community. She is currently working with one of our interns to start a show about the “issues” facing artists in somerville. She is hoping that anything from the cost of studio space to art education in public schools will be addressed. She has met with the host of another art show we do at SCAT to discuss the format of the show.

Christy is also teaching digital media courses to youth including a class on audio recording and garage band and a program called “Say Media!” where youth create music videos, PSAs, and documentaries.

Christy told us, “I have really enjoyed working with all of them. Some of them have really gotten into their projects and will stay several hours after the camp is through to finish up. they are pretty motivated (they should be, they get paid more than i do to teach, just to show up :) and they are producing some really neat youth media that will appear on our station.”

Our project accomplishments were exceptional– Taylor helped NTRC to create a solid multi-media program for youth at its Northwest Tower site, and to expand our reach into a local high school, Michelle Clark. We implemented a Hip Hop Club at Northwest Tower, where Taylor has helped to develop a digital audio and literacy curriculum, and an Apprenticeship in collaboration with After School Matters at Michelle Clark High, where Taylor designed a curriculum around digital video production.

Will assisted with the completion of the Spring 2006 class by helping to organize the graduation screening. Shortly before that screening, Will recruited students and professional filmmaker mentors for the Fall 2006 class, which began in early October 2006. The Fall 2006 class has now graduated (as of March 28, 2007) and again Will assisted with the organization of the graduation screening, our longest and best attended yet. This past winter, Will again recruited students and mentors, from regular partner schools and new partners, for the Spring 2007 class.

The Reel Impact program has been completely overhauled with Will’s input and support into a series of workshops and working meetings on distribution and outreach for graduates of the Lab. He has been in charge of distributing our films over the web at four different partner websites - including Reel Works, ListenUp!, Uth TV, and AOL. Will has been releasing a new film (from our library of over 100 films) every two weeks and last year we had over a million viewers of our work! Our first Master Class, a yearlong advanced film production class, was recruited for and began in the late fall. Will is currently arranging specialty workshops such as screenwriting and lighting for film for the Master Class students.

Our first ever benefit was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 2006, and Will contributed to the creation of the “Labumentary”, a film about Reel Works’ mission, for the benefit screening. He also coordinated our student workers for the evening, who were charged with selling tickets for and running the raffle at the benefit reception.

This spring, we are in the process of strengthening our recruitment efforts with our partners at local schools and non-profit organizations. Will is part of the team who is meeting with these partners, educating them fully about our mission and requirements and developing deeper bonds in order to reach more students who might be interested in our programs.

All of these activities that Will has been in charge of and assisting with are directly affecting the ability of Reel Works to reach more and more of New York City’s teens who are interested in developing critical thinking, media literacy, self-esteem and relationships with professionals in the field of filmmaking.

This year we had a number of major accomplishments with AJ McGuire, including establishing a new course at the Social Justice Academy called Committee, that has added a core of projects for teens to complete in after school. After school projects for example, are incorporating Action Research principles that allow students to examine issues such as Global Warming and it’s impact on energy consumption and lifestyles, and equity in education in the Boston Public Schools and at the Social eeJustice Academy. The after school Mosaic program screened their videos for the entire student body in March, and we continued to make connections with new teachers and students both during school and after school. We have increase the number of teens participating in After School to 17. Our program has expanded to three full days per week. Two of our teens from the Social Justice Academy After School continued to work in our Summer Intensive at the Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN) in the Mall of Roxbury, where AJ was the lead program developer. Working in teams of 5 with three other team leaders, AJ helped to develop the curriculum, developed a web site workspace where projects could be posted and created a web based project tracking system based on the Drupal programming language.

Both of our VISTAs have been very dedicated and resourceful in supporting the media lab after school initiatives. They have found themselves being passionate about our mission to help teens develop creative, multidisciplinary media and education projects that foster teamwork and communication skills, community building, insight into critical issues, and ways to express those issues to others.