Korean American Community Services
Website:
http://www.kacschgo.org/ Location:
Chicago, IL
Our mission at KACS is to celebrate our ethnicity and to empower all members of the community by providing educational, legal, health and social services.
We have created this web site as a public service, offering information about our agency and services, as well as matters
of concern to our constituents and supporters.
Supported Projects
Youth Community Technology Program Development
Molly Szymanski
8/2005 — 8/2006
Molly will work with the Youth Community Technology Program (YCTP) a youth project within the Korean American Community Services Community Education Department serving at-risk youth ages 17-21 through technical instruction and holistic services. In Particular, Molly will help develop a sustainable system of outreach for you youth technology program students and volunteers (guest speakers, field trip sites, etc), will assist with program activities, will research information around issues of the digital divide to create a program Statement of Need for use in grant writing and will research possible funding streams for the programs.
"Girls Get Digital" Project Building and Teacher
Ria Fay-Berquist
9/2004 — 9/2005
I. Increase student participation
II. Enhance Volunteer Recruitment and Management Procedures
III. Raise funds to support ongoing programs
IV. Build the YCTP and GGD media presence
V. Develop and strengthen programs and curriculum
Ria has done a good job of connecting with schools and organizations to
create alliances for projects and for recruitment. Ria hasalso been wonderfully effective at recruiting guest speakers and field trip hosts for GGD.
Ria has done a wonderful job of preparing program information for the public, including the fall GGD update (sent to funders and partner agencies) and the December graduation flier. Because the program’s outreach has been so successful, there has not been a need for the extensive outreach we have had in the past.
I believe Ria’s work on program curriculum and her work in the classroom will be one of her greatest legacies in the program. She has developed strong curricula and has led successful, creative classes. She has developed curriculum for and taught the fall and spring classes and has developed a proposal for a summer video program. Her teaching style with the students has been steadily improving, and her comfort level and ability in working with students in and out of the classroom has been a pleasure to watch grow.
I have been continually impressed by Ria’s dedication to the program and ability to keep on top of the many challenges of this period of time, and I believe that her ability to bring together the creative and organizational aspects of the program will serve us well in coming years.
Curriculum Development and Outreach
Katherine Smith
8/2003 — 8/2004
•curriculum development (in coordination with the Multimedia Instructor)
•volunteer recruitment and management
•student outreach
•development of outreach networks and relationships
•student instruction/discussion facilitation
•development of program documentation
•participation in program evaluation
•developing a resource library for students on a variety of topics (gender, multimedia, education, etc)
•Website development in coordination with web design curriculum development.
Girls Get Digital trains women in the use of media; program participants create multimedia resources for local nonprofits and other clients. GGD was able to see the fruits of our labor during our pilot year. As in the first half of her year with the program, Kathy was the keystone of our success, though additionally exciting was watching Kathy truly come into her own in her coordination of the program.
A strong curriculum was created in our pilot year. This is under constant review and reconstruction, but curriculum work (including reflection on what worked and what should be changed) in the first year has created a strong foundation for that.
The GGD application and program evaluation documentation was created prior to the first session and has needed very little revision since. Documentation for the rest of the program was created on as-need basis, and has largely followed guidelines by our summer session funder, which provided a standard set of consents, incident reports, etc.
Kathy did a great job conducting outreach in schools, through local social service organizations and in clubs for participant recruitment. Kathy also did great work with a volunteer and the Multimedia Instructor to identify field trip sites.
Kathy’s excellent research and writing skills were a huge asset to the program and resulted in our funding by AfterSchool Matters (for the summer and now the fall GGD sessions) and for our very first foundation funding.
Kathy developed and circulated press releases. The newsletter was tabled for the time being, and is now being developed by our current VISTA staff.
Initial work on identifying local program and online resources for program participants was completed. In a city as populated and large as Chicago, an exhaustive resource library is a Herculean task. Kathy assisted with the foundations for this library and the task is being carried on with staff at this time.
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