2008 MNN Grantees:
Tactical Media Toolkit (7 Organizations)
The Tactical Media Toolkit is designed to provide organizations with media resources to respond to community needs. The grant provides a strategic video production and post-production equipment package to the organization, enabling them to produce broadcast television programming virtually anywhere. MNN convenes core personnel from the all organizations that receive the grant for training in program production, effective use of the equipment, resource sharing and media strategy.
The New York Independent Media Center
The New York Independent Media Center (NYIMC) is committed to producing investigative, accurate, educational and empowering media that deals directly with a broad spectrum of social, environmental, labor, and economic issues of concern to communities around the world. As one of the most active of the approximate 200 Independent Media Centers around the world, the New York Independent Media Center produces two free newspapers. This unique print outlet fosters the production of well-edited high-quality citizen journalism that gives voice to people and movements that go unheard or are misrepresented in the corporate media.
Disabilities Network of NYC
The Disabilities Network of New York City (DNNYC) is a coalition of consumers, advocates and professional organizations representing and working on behalf of people of all ages with motor and sensory disabilities. DNNYC seeks, through systems advocacy, to promote full participation of people with physical disabilities in the life of the city by strengthening appropriate citywide policies, resources, services and legal protections; assuring reasonable accommodations; and building informed and accurate public perception about people with disabilities.
Immigrant Social Services
Starting with a simple mission to improve the well-being of immigrants and other under served persons in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Chinatown, Immigrant Social Services (ISS) has grown to offer a remarkable suite of services, from English language instruction and translation services, summer youth employment, youth drug prevention, and cultural programming. ISS’s organization’s primary focus lies with serving immigrant youth and families to provide services and referrals which support the strengths that our participants bring to our programs as well as meet their needs.
City At Peace
City at Peace-New York (CP-NY) uses the performing arts to empower teenagers to create safe, healthy, and peaceful lives and communities, developing the next generation of engaged community leaders in New York City. CP-NY envisions a city where young people are valued and respected, and play a leading role in creating vibrant communities, and ultimately, a “city at peace.” Each year, CP-NY engages a vastly diverse, core group of approximately 100 young people over two programs, ages 13 to 19 years old in an intensive, yearlong, youth-led program of artistic excellence and positive youth development utilizing its creative process to explore and address the complicated forces and events that youth encounter on a daily basis.
Union Settlement
Since 1895, Union Settlement has worked with and for the people of East Harlem, one of New York City's poorest immigrant communities. A community mainstay, we seek to foster leadership and self-sufficiency by assisting our neighbors in building better lives for themselves and their families. Today, they assist more than 13,000 area residents each year with effective programs in education, childcare, counseling, the arts, youth development, senior services, nutrition, job training and economic development.
Kids Creative
Kids Creative is a community based organization that provides summer camps, after-school programs, and music and theater workshops to elementary, middle and high school children at a time when arts education is being cut from schools due to budgetary and governmental constraints and priorities. Kids Creative helps youth from diverse backgrounds gain confidence, build communities and develop cooperation skills that will be essential for success in life. They are passionate about enhancing the welfare of underserved children in New York City, providing quality education and bringing distinctively unique, valuable experiences to those who would otherwise not have access to the arts.
Children for Children
Children for Children (CFC) was founded in 1996 by a group of parents concerned that many New York children grow up in insular environments without a meaningful connection to, or sense of responsibility for, their greater community. CFC programs engaged over 25,000 young people in 2006, and in 2007, they anticipate reaching over 50,000 youth from across the socio-economic spectrum with substantive, age-appropriate volunteering programs. With 17 distinct programs focusing on different methods of engaging youth in service, CFC provides valuable and comprehensive opportunities for making a difference to the young people of New York/ Children for Children promotes hands-on youth volunteering and giving programs that teach and instill the value of community involvement and civic engagement in children from all socio-economic backgrounds beginning at a young age.
