Transmission Project

Jessica has used technology tools to facilitate organizational communication and information gathering/sharing at TCP. These tools included an Intranet, the Vienna newsreader and a del.icio.us account for the organization. This work has enabled TCP to stay on top of cutting edge issues in the field of youth and technology.

She has also made major contributions in researching, writing, editing and design work for some of our products. This has helped TCP achieve its mission of advocating for digital resources and access to benefit the nation’s 73 million children and youth, particularly those who are low-income or underserved.

Jessica has also completed several projects for CCTPG, working towards meeting the broader goal of advocating for all communities’ access to broadband and advanced technologies and the benefits they offer.

Working with several colleagues, Jessica helped create the new CCTPG Web site and edited, updated and posted a majority of the documents currently available. She uploaded the contacts currently in the CiviCRM and created an automated sign-up form for new members. She was also responsible for many listserv and Web site updates and helped with several outreach efforts, including a videoconference. She gathered information for an online map of CTCs and helped with CCTPG’s network restructuring.

One of the measurements of Jessica’s success was whether CCTPG won any legislative victories while she was serving. Of the four pieces of legislation CCTPG focused on last year, three of them passed.

We have increased our publicity through our VISTA’s work on designing our annual report, developing a template for our newsletter and designing our website. Dan Chen worked on the design and layout of the annual report which was published in December. The design was significantly more professional than in the past. It is sent out to donors and other interested individuals as part of our year-end donation appeal. This past year, the year end giving exceeded the amount raised in past years. Although we can’t determine if it was due to the design of the annual report, we did receive many comments about how well done it was. The Pui Tak Center has not had a regular newsletter for 7-8 years and has intended to restart it. Dan assisted in developing a design template. The newsletter will be mailed to supporters and donors as well as distributed in local churches. Dan has also begun work in redesigning our website. He has completed the initial design and site map. We are currently working on the content. After that is completed, Dan will work with a programmer to get the site up and running. All of these efforts improves our communication with current and potential supporters (donors, volunteers, etc.).

The Youth Media Institute and Electronic Community have had a very succesful six months, in no small part thanks to our two VISTAs, Colleen and Dina. Dina’s technical expertise was critical in determining what type of content management system to use in creating the beta site for Project: Think Different’s Electronic Community. In addition to driving the design of the site and the management of the forums and other features, Dina was active in training other staff members, including the Media Watch Team in using the site, so that they could share their expertise with other users and actively participate in the online community.

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.

Kevin increased the number of teens participating in after school to 30 and cemented our relationship with Xavier Rozas, the media teacher at the school. We have developed a new curriculum, created a prototype blog and self paced instructional web site, with project and management support for volunteers and have introduced new technologies such as Live Type, into the after school lab space.

We have also initiated a new internship program for our teens which will begin this Fall at the Schattuck Hospital and we have developed internship agreements with Harvard University and Emerson College. Our e newsletter contacts have increased by 1,000 names. Kevin completed a manual for new employees and volunteers at HOME, Inc. to help new volunteers and VISTAs to more easily integrate themselves into the programs at the media labs. 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.

The first objective, developing the Stories for Change Website was greatly successful in helping distribute digital storytelling videos and curriculum to trainers and participants. The website is now currently live and growing, with many resources collected and uploaded by Jessica, in addition to coordinating a large number of trainers that, until now, were unorganized. In regard to the second objective, making the curriculum more youth friendly, Jessica stepped in a gathered the needed resources to successfully complete the project. She drew on her own experience working with youth. She also brought CDS staff with additional youth and curriculum development experience into ongoing planning meetings.

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.

In February Cal Rural Housing completed working on a 3 month project with Fresno County Community Development Division in which we provided technical assistance in developing an electronic database to track their CDBG expenditures. The County had never tracked these expenditures other then in a word document. Rebecca inputted the information we obtained in a word document into Excel, analyzed, charted and developed maps for the department. We then provided maps for a presentation to the Board of Supervisors that shows expenditures by community and by district (attached). The County should now be able to more easily track Federal funding using this database and produce charts and map in a more timely fashion. Rebecca spent a majority of her time revamping our website and upgrading our Rural Toolbox. She upgraded our old site using Drupal and developed a searchable database of more than 130 California Inclusionary Housing programs, the first of its kind in the US. The database provides summaries of characteristics for each policy. Users are able to search for these summaries by jurisdiction name or by more than 30 other variables. Rebecca also developed an introductory tutorial on using open-source desktop GIS (MapWindow) that can be used as either a GIS viewer or an advanced should be live by August-September.

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.

Marcia worked during the year to reorganize the task force/coordinating board of the Parsells and Denver Computer Technology Center. She also coordinated with the Academy for Career Development, which provided computer software, support, and long-distance learning classes for neighborhood adults in basic computer skills. Marcia took several classes herself through the Academy to upgrade her skills and improve her ability to find volunteers for the center. Marcia worked throughout the year with neighborhood groups developing a website based on the needs of these groups, preparing a listserv for the community group, and working to improve communication among various committees and services in the community. Marcia attended meetings of the Youth/Adult Partnership grant, a capacity-building youth-serving grant from NY State, which worked to bring neighborhood groups together and work on youth-chosen activities. Marcia recruited, trained, scheduled, monitored, and evaluated volunteers for the CTC lab. Marcia worked with church members and other volunteers to maintain and expand outreach services to neighborhood youth and adults. Marcia worked on One Voice/One Vision.

Marcia worked with the local neighborhood organization, the Beechwood Organization, to set up a website and improve communication between individuals in the organization and members of the community. She sought input from various parts of the neighborhood and communicated effectively with the web designer and the president of the organization. She was always positive and friendly to the youth who attended the CTC lab. She was also encouraging to volunteers and supporters.