Alianza Domincana, Inc., La Plaza Video Project
Award: $15,000 (fifth year of MNN Funding)
Alianza Dominicana, Inc. is a not for profit community development organization whose mission is to assist children youth and families to break the cycle of poverty and fulfill their potential as members of the wider community. Founded in 1982, Alianza develops model initiatives that use comprehensive and integrated services to resolve families’ multiple needs. Alianza currently administers more than twenty distinct programs, including media arts and cultural services, family-focused services, youth development, employment and training programs, health and mental health services and preventive services. Alianza has been providing video training classes since 1993 and a studio production facility to the community since 1995. It has trained more than one thousand community residents in video production techniques since the program’s inception. MNN support will contribute toward further video training and production out of Alianza’s La Plaza-based facility.
Asociación Tepeyac de Nueva York, Tepeyac Television Service Project
Award: $12,500 (second year of MNN Funding)
The Tepeyac Television Service was developed to serve the undocumented Latino immigrant community, one of the most invisible and marginalized populations in New York City. While undocumented workers living in NYC contribute substantially to the city's economy they are without labor, health, or educational benefits. MNN support will fund the second year of training and programming production by the organization. Programs produced by the project are aired bi-weekly on channel 67 of MNN as well as broadcast on channel 7 in Guadalajara, Mexico on a monthly basis.
Bread and Roses Cultural Project, Inc., Untold America Project
Award: $16,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
Bread and Roses is the not-for-profit cultural outreach arm of the 1199 SEIU National Health & Human Services Union, representing over 250,000 workers – predominantly African-American, Latino and Asian women – throughout the New York area. Bread and Roses’ mission has been to bring the full range of cultural arts into the lives of working families, while also nurturing all forms of artistic self-expression. MNN funding will support the “untoldamerica project”. The project is designed to address an urgent need in our culture -- for overlooked individuals and communities to have the tools to tell their own stories, and a medium or distribution outlet through which to share those stories. The project will train small groups in the basics of video production and post-production, enabling and empowering them to tell their own stories and document their own worlds.
Domincan Women’s Development Center, Chrysalis Project
Award: $9,000 (seventh year of MNN Funding)
The Domincan Women’s Development Center seeks to aide in the growth and development of Dominican and other Latina women by uniting them and helping them to seek solutions to the problems that affect their lives. The center does not subscribe to the recipient model of service delivery; instead it promotes self-sufficiency and shared ownership and encourages women to become agents of change in their own lives. The Chrysalis Project is a video production program offered by DWDC where program participants not only learn useful video production skills, but also produce an educational video on the topic of their choice. Not only do the women learn a useful technical skill but they also have the opportunity to continue their study in this field and explore alternative career opportunities. Support from MNN will fund the purchase of digital production equipment - enabling the project to be sustained independent of future MNN funding.
Hausofouch NYC “Unitygain” TV Project
Award: $6,000 (second year of MNN Funding)
An evolving, collaborating collective of independent artists working in electronic media to create live multimedia performance events out of MNN’s satellite site at Downtown Community Television Center. They aim to “call into question the usual notions of entertainment, consumption, and production at work within the socio-cultural realm…” The hausofouch is dedicated to promoting the appreciation and understanding of collaborative realtime electronic audio-visual art as enacted on a local human scale by encouraging the creators of such work to build cooperative networks with other artists. Support from MNN will assist in the production of weekly live multimedia performance collaborations by the organization.
Housing Works, Inc. Video Project
Award: $9,000 (sixth year of MNN Funding)
Housing Works is a minority-controlled, community-based, not-for-profit corporation providing housing, healthcare, advocacy, job training, and vital supportive services to New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. At the heart of their mission is a commitment to advocating for the systemic changes necessary in public attitudes, policies and laws to ensure that AIDS and public health policies at all levels of government are both sound in concept and equitable in administration. The Video Project offers instructional workshops and produces original videos, conceived and written by Housing Works’ clients. The objectives of the project are to improve the self-esteem of clients participating in the conception, development and production of videos, to increase social cooperation skills and life-skills among project participants and to support participation in other comprehensive services which improve clients mental and physical health outcomes. The Video Project conducts camera workshops and editing workshops throughout the year, culminating in screening events where clients present their work to their peers and to the general public. Support from MNN will fund the purchase of digital production equipment - enabling the project to be sustained independent of future MNN funding.
The International Agency for Minority Artis Affairs, Inc., Harlem Media Center
Award: $10,000 (sixth year of MNN Funding)
The International Agency for Minority Artist Affairs serves the arts and cultural needs of multi-ethnic Harlem village. The mission includes; access to technology and funding resources, nurture professional development in performing, visual and literary arts, publicize and promote the arts in Harlem and generate support for cultural tourism in the Harlem community. The Harlem Media Center is an interactive video training and production program providing hands-on media training services to area residents. Support from MNN will allow for the digital upgrade of the centers equipment base and continued training and production services.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
Award: $10,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center provides a home for the birth, nurture and celebration of LGB&T organizations, institutions and culture; cares for individuals and groups in need; educates the public and the LGB&T community; and empowers individuals and groups to achieve their fullest potential. Support from MNN will assist in the development of a training and production program for Center volunteers based upon a core of the Center’s Project Speak-Out participants. The program will develop programming specific to the Center and the LGB&T community for distribution on MNN’s public access channels and other venues.
Literacy Assistance Center, Adult Media Literacy and Video Production Project
Award: $12,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
The Literacy Assistance Center (LAC) has been the hub of training and educational resources for adult literacy educators throughout New York City since 1984. The LAC serves as a liaison among literacy providers, including libraries, community colleges, public schools, social service providers, union education programs, community-based organizations, city government, and the New York State Education Department. Support from MNN will fund the LAC’s Adult Media Literacy and Video Production project, providing Manhattan-based adult literacy and ESOL teachers with skills and resources to incorporate media literacy into instruction and to create student-generated videos that address issues of concern to Manhattan adults who need basic skills training, GED, workforce development, and English-as-a-Second language education.
The Lower Eastside Biograph Project
Award: $17,500 (fourth year of MNN Funding)
The Lower East Side Biography Project is a community based media training and video archive project documenting the lives of Lower East Side and Downtown community residents. The L.E.S. Bio Project seeks to stem the tide of cultural amnesia and gentrification in its community by presenting history through the voices of long time residents, helping to bridge the gulf between newcomers to the neighborhood and community elders. MNN provides equipment and personnel support to facilitate trainings covering pre-production through post- production. The workshops are reinforced with hands on practice sessions & workshops. Participants work within small production teams to shoot, edit and direct their own biography segments.
The Lower Eastside Girls Club, View From Loisaida: Girl TV
Award: $17,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
The Lower Eastside Girls Club was founded 7 years ago to address the disparity of services and opportunities available to girls and young women in their community. Their mission is to develop and deliver innovative educational programs to girls. It is well documented that women are currently underrepresented in the sciences, math, engineering and technology fields. Much of this has to do with the fall off of interest (whether from poor teaching or cultural pressures) in these fields as girls transition into their teens. By providing mentors (women in the industries) and internships in the field, the project aims to keep girls interested in science, engineering and technology - and to produce quality local TV. MNN’s digital production equipment support will enable Girl TV to provide a year long series of video training and production opportunities - producing half hour magazine format programs for cablecast and community distribution as well as build skills and capacity for the future.
National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS), Lower East Side Video Project
Award: $16,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
The National Mobilization Against Sweatshops is a membership workers’ center that brings together working people of all races, trades and genders to eliminate sweatshop conditions in the US. In its Lower East Side Workers Center they are reaching out to and organizing communities that have been hardest hit by the 9-11 disaster and yet most neglected by the government and charities: low-income Latinos, African Americans and Eastern Europeans living or working in lower Manhattan. MNN will provide equipment and personnel support for the NMASS Lower East Side Video Project to use video as a tool to organize the community through two means, documentation and video training.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Junior Scholars Program
Award: $16,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
The Junior Scholars Program is a Saturday school geared toward middle and high school students of African descent throughout the New York Metropolitan area. Its primary goal is to ground young people in the histories and cultures of people throughout the African Diaspora. The program recruits youth between the ages of 11 and 17 for an intensive, 26-week series of Saturday sessions from 10am-3pm, Junior Scholars gain access to extensive resources at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. MNN support will assist the The Junior Scholars Media Project, a lab-style media program geared toward developing scholars to use digital media (video, music, photography and computer graphics) to express their ideas. This intensive arts training program is a partnership between the Junior Scholars Program and the Diaspora Studio, a Harlem-based production studio and post-production facility.
WBAI 99.5 FM Radio
Award: $20,000 (first year of MNN Funding)
WBAI is a listener sponsored, community based radio station that is part of the Pacifica Radio Network. Eighty-five (85) percent of the stations funding comes from a member/subscriber base, with the remaining funds coming from CPB sources, the station does not accept corporate funding. WBAI has an ethnically diverse listenership of 250,000 in the New York Metropolitan Area and provides 24 hour broadcasting of public affairs, independent arts and culture, health, political and comedy programs along with public events, community calendar and a much-needed forum for the peace and social justice movement. MNN will equip and set-up a portable, live multi-camera studio system interfaced with WBAI’s radio studio located at 120 Wall Street. WBAI will fund the installation of a TV1 line from 120 Wall Street to DCTV, allowing for the cablecasting of live programming on MNN channels originating from the WBAI studios. Training will be conducted for WBAI staff and volunteers as well as their summer youth intern program.
MNN staff will work with MNN’s Programming Committee and WBAI to develop suitable programming guidelines and objectives.
West Harlem Environmental Action (WE ACT)
Award: $11,597 (first year of MNN Funding)
WE ACT is a non-profit community-based organization working to improve environmental protection, safeguard public health, and secure environmental justice in the predominatlely African-American and Latino communities of Harlem and Washington Heights in New York City. MNN funding will facilitate the training of twelve young women of color to utilize media to develop their leadership potential and effectively advocate for the clean and healthy environment necessary for good reproductive and overall heath. Once training is completed a series of programs will be produced out of MNN’s 59th Street studios.
