Contact Information
Organization Name:
Boston Neighborhood Network
Address:
BNN Charles J. Beard II Media Center
3025 Washington Street
Roxbury MA 02119
Why is your organization interested in increased broadband usage among your members and community:
Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN) is a community media center providing Boston residents and non-profits with training and the means to share creative works, perspectives and information throughout the city and beyond. With our recent move to a historically preserved, LEED Silver-certified new facility that is attracting new participants from throughout the city, BNN has built on a 25 year record of community service to become a model of sustainable development.
Our new home provides enhanced opportunities to transform lives and communities. We are already seeing increased participation and enthusiasm among Boston youth, residents and non-profit organizations, with over 20,000 visitors to Egleston Square in our first two years. Newly designed studios and resources are now all under one roof in a readily accessible location that is a destination for people from all over Boston. Community programming can now be seen globally at our website. An expanded youth program is leading to increasing numbers of young people actively involved with BNN. By bringing different constituency groups together in one facility, new connections are being made among people, organizations, and communities.
The Open Media Project (OMP) is currently providing BNN with valuable assistance as we develop a multifunctional website to extend the reach of Boston’s diverse community voices, and programming in over a dozen languages, beyond our local cable system. Our growing immigrant communities will benefit tremendously, as they connect and interact with friends and family around the world, while sharing essential information about health, culture, education and job opportunities. An extension of our work will enable us to complete what we have started and to increase participation in and demand for broadband technology within underserved neighborhoods, in Boston and elsewhere, on the other side of the digital divide. We are requesting ongoing technical assistance from OMP as well as essential equipment upgrades including web server replacement and addition of a dedicated RAID server for website and transcoding station.
Demographic Information
Service Area Congressional Districts:
Does your organization serve a federally recognized tribal entities? If yes, please identify:
Does your organization serve vulnerable population groups? If so, please identify:
Hispanic
Black/African-American
Asian
English as Second Language (ESL)
Disabled
Low Income
Unemployed
Senior Citizen (55 and over)
Youth
Other
If other, please explain::
We serve the entire City of Boston. Our immigrant population is growing rapidly, with new arrivals from over 100 countries around the world. According to the 2000 U.S. census, 26% of Bostonians are foreign-born, the fifth highest proportion among the 23 largest U.S. cities. With New Bostonians being largely overlooked by commercial media, we need to ensure that all voices are part of the public dialogue. A cornerstone of our mission is our commitment to providing production and distribution capacity to Boston’s many ethnic and cultural communities. BNN’s channel schedule provides a self-portrait of New England’s most diverse city, with programming in more than a dozen languages, including Spanish, Haitian Kreyol, Arabic, Vietnamese, Russian, Mandarin, Cape Verdean Creole, and Somalian.
Number of hosehold subscribers:
Estimated population size of your service area:
Please provide demogrphic information for the population you serve:
Membership demographics indicate the diversity of participation at BNN: 42% Black/African-American; 32% White/non-Hispanic; 7% Hispanic; 6% Haitian; 4% Cape Verdean; 4% Asian or Pacific Islander; 9% other. Our project will specifically be directed to vulnerable populations including non-English speaking immigrant groups, people with disabilities and others who are underrepresented in Boston media, including court-involved youth, low-income seniors and the LGBT community. We will outreach to individuals and organizations of these populations for a series of open house/facility tours geared to their needs and interests while providing awareness of broadband-related opportunities. In the process we will gather their ideas about how we can utilize broadband technologies to better serve them.
Supporting Vulnerable Populations
Please describe the specific affirmative steps that your program will take to engage and serve the groups identified:
• Consult with Office of New Bostonians, other collaborating organizations and current community producers to form partnerships for increased participation among under-represented communities. Identify community liaisons in support of outreach to recruit interest in creative expression, civic engagement and media-making opportunities at BNN.
• Identify crucial messages, such as voter registration drives, to promote in various languages on BNN channels.
• Develop multilingual materials (print, multimedia and video), to promote orientation sessions, tours and classes. Develop training plan to include informal exploration of digital media production, formal classes and other opportunities at BNN.
• Recruit and train community liaisons to assist with training in various languages, and to offer ongoing individual assistance to participants as they develop their technical and creative skills and interests.
• Develop digital gallery incorporating projects from diverse constituencies citywide, for display in new facility, on BNN channels and the web. Present visual artworks, including photos of people, neighborhood scenes, murals and paintings as well as computer-generated art, animation, and original music compositions. Promote opportunities to submit content in various languages.
• Expand website to include streaming and on-demand global accessibility of television programs and digital gallery content in various languages.
This project is an extension of existing efforts to address related goals:
• Integrate upgraded technology and use improved broadband connectivity to extend the reach of community information, creative expression and public dialogue.
• Enhance digital media education to offer state-of-the-art, professional level training leading to marketable job skills.
• Target outreach to increase participation among youth, adults, seniors and non-profit organizations of underserved, multilingual communities.
• Expand year-round youth program to involve more young people in a greater range of opportunities for technology training, digital media production and self-expression.
• Build sustainable revenue diversification measures to ensure ongoing delivery of new services.
Please describe the ways your center will be accessible to people with disabilities and technologies will be used:
With a new facility that is fully accessible to all, we are seeing increasing participation among people with disabilities. One recent example is Eye To Eye, BNN’s first series in American Sign Language, produced by Bostonians who are deaf. We are seeking guidance from people with disabilities as we explore ways that broadband and digital media technologies can make the community media experience – viewing, learning, creating and sharing content – more inclusive.
Do you offer, or plan to offer, multilingual training and outreach? If so, please describe and identify languages it will be in:
Over 25 years, we have had occasional workshops conducted in other languages. For example, in 1996 we provided television production classes for the growing Vietnamese community in Boston, in their native language. The result was a well-coordinated team that produced two television series for many years. These valuable programs promoted civic participation, social and cultural activities and taught English as a second language. We now seek to utilize new technology to adapt curricula and materials for training in many languages. In particular, we plan to outreach to growing Latino, Brazilian, Cape Verdean and Cambodian communities to establish partnerships we hope will result in new programming by and for those communities.
Local Drupal Development Commitement In addition to what the OMF will provide through this grant, we
estimate that a successful implementation will require a minimum of 80
hours of local drupal support (through trained staff, contractors, or
volunteers).
How many hours of professional drupal development support can you commit to securing between Oct 2010 and Oct 2012:
What is the estimated Cost (or value, if volunteer) of this commitment:
Current Capitial Equipment Commitment If your organization already has some or all of the equipment
required to implement the Open Media Project, or the capital budget
necessary to acquire it, that value will be included as part of your
match. If not, grant funds will be used to acquire the equipment you
require.
Current Digital Broadcast Server(s):
Current Dedicated RAID Storage:
Other Current Equipment Value:
If other, please explain:
Digital production equipment (studios, field, editing)
Future Capital Equipment Commitment If your organization already has some or all of the equipment
required to implement the Open Media Project, or the capital budget
necessary to acquire it, that value will be included as part of your
match. If not, grant funds will be used to acquire the equipment you
require.
How much Capital Equipment budget could you devote towards the
acquisition of the following equipment:
Other Future Equipment Value:
If other, please explain:
-Networked Attached Storage System to network multimedia lab computers for media file storage and sharing to cable channels and web
-Offline Backup System to provide secure, stable [tape] backup and archiving of media files
-Presentation system for classroom
We have committed funding for these three items ($33,376 from the Timothy Smith Fund).
We are seeking support for badly needed webserver replacement ($7,000), transcoding station ($10,000) and dedicated RAID server for website ($3000). (Current RAID storage is for cablecast programming.)
Technical and Administrative Support We estimate that a successful implementation of the OMP will require a minimum of 80 hours of technical and administrative support
(through involvement of your ED, bookkeeper, engineer and other staff). Any time contributed will count towards your in-kind match.
How many hours can you commit to securing between Oct 2010 and Oct 2012:
List each staff member, position, number of hours committed, and hourly wage (or equivalent, if salary):
Jim Atwood, Director of Membership and Development, 100 hrs, $25
Dennis Dutra, Chief Engineer, 100 hrs, $25
Dan Moore, Operations Manager, 100 hrs, $25
Other staff, 100 hrs, $20
Video Content Commitment Partners will be supporting Sustainable Broadband Adoption by
addressing the primary hurdle identified by non-adopters: a perception
that broadband is not relevant to life, especially in low-income and
minority communities.
What is the value of the staff time and resources you are willing to
devote to supporting the production of video content that will address
'broadband relevance' from the perspective of members from
disconnected communities"?
If other, please explain:
Boston is a city with a rich history of citizens speaking out to shape our future. We are committed to ensuring that all voices are part of this public dialogue. One remarkable example that exemplifies past successes and the need for this project is Telekreyol, a collaborative production of many Haitian residents and organizations. They have worked together to produce more than 1000 hour-long programs through 22 years as a weekly BNN series. Telekreyol has been on the scene at community parades, festivals and political rallies. They have provided news from Haiti, live telethons for hurricane victims, information about health, immigration law, and housing. Through this process of celebrating Haitian art, history and culture, community media has been established as a local custom of Haitian-Bostonians, who now produce over a dozen weekly series on BNN.
For many years, Telekreyol has also been committed to sharing their programs with Haitian communities beyond Boston.Through a costly and cumbersome process of copying and mailing videotapes, they have distributed their work throughout New England, as well as New York City and Miami. In speaking to a national community media conference about Telekreyol’s successes and challenges over 20 years of production, producer Charlot Lucien said: “Telekreyol has yet to acquire the level of technology that will help us rise to the age of digital media: storage and distribution of data, digital production, digital distribution, and web site design, are still a world for us to explore in order to become more independent and efficient.”
At the BNN Charles J. Beard II Media Center, our new LEED Silver certified facility in the heart of the city, improved connectivity to cable systems, satellite, web and emerging media platforms provide new opportunities for interactivity and distribution of community programming to worldwide audiences. Combined with new tools such as a digital server, as well as still needed ones such as a new web server, we are committed to an expanding array of program initiatives designed to reach a broad range of Boston’s ethnic and cultural communities and to facilitate communication among these groups and the larger community. These efforts are greatly supported by thework of many college interns. We estimate the value of their related work at $25,000.
Broadband Training Program
If you intend to provide training or education, how many people in total will your program(s) reach:
How many hours of training do you expect to provide per person on average for your program(s), through completion of training:
How many Full Time Employee (FTEs) will you employ for broadband and digital literacy training purposes:
Describe the qualifications and training of full time employee instructors of broadband and digital literacy training:
Youth Program/Media Lab Coordinator Monique Douglas is a professonal digital mediamaker who has been teaching Final Cut Pro and other digital media application at BNN for 10 years. Director of Membership and Development Jim Atwood has worked at BNN in various capacities since 1989, will provide introductory information sessions that put BNN training and production opportunities in the context of sustainable broadband development.
Job Creation
How many indirect jobs will be created from this project:
How many direct jobs will be created from this project:
