NBPC Launches Public Media Corps
The National Black Programming Consortium, a national public media organization with a 30-year track record of increasing capacity in minority communities, is launching a collaborative and scalable Public Media Corps (PMC) in 2011. The PMC is a new national framework for supporting creative, sustainable and community-initiated methods for addressing the broadband divide in communities of color that have been slow to adopt.
As innovative technologies embrace our society, encouraging and strengthening civic participation, conversation and interaction through web-based and mobile applications and social networks, great concern exists regarding the accessibility to credible and up-to-date information amongst communities of color – Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, African American and Asian American – as well as low-income and senior citizens. Accordingly, today’s public media must do more to fully reflect the public’s needs and personal welfare, and engage community members at the local level. America needs “informed communities,” places where democratic values of openness, inclusion, participation and empowerment thrive across all appropriate media. The practice of such a model ensures that communities are open, officials are accountable and that the public is engaged.
Loosely modeled on Teach for America, the PMC is a new national service that proposes to promote and extend broadband adoption in underserved communities by placing Fellows skilled in technology, media production and outreach in residencies at underperforming high schools, public broadcast stations and nonprofit community anchor institutions. Working in regionally managed teams, the Fellows will develop interactive web-based and mobile applications driven by compelling local public interest content; design and run training programs for influential community members who can extend the training into the wider community (including educators, parents, youth leaders and social service providers); and observe, document and analyze patterns of use to inform the evolving national standards around 21st-century skills and the recently announced national broadband plan.
In anticipation of an official launch of the PMC in 2011, NBPC is conducting a one-city beta phase of the PMC in Washington, DC for residences that will take place from June 2010 to December 2010. The purpose of the beta is to build capacity for the national service, document it and build toolkits based on a 21st-century skills framework designed with local needs and local patterns of use in mind.
Join our mailing list to receive an email notice when applications will be available. Only residents of the Washington, DC metropolitan area are eligible to apply for the beta Fellowships.
