-: "Women In Technology" 2003 :-
The 21st century will see the rapid growth of the telecommunications industry and our young people need to understand the various technologies and how they influence this industry. As seen in recent events, now more than ever we realize how powerful television can be. Here at Public Access TV, we are a window to our community and local issues. Yet, many of the women in our community, especially our teens, have not taken advantages of this resource. Television is a powerful tool to communicate ideas and opinions. The "Women in technology " project will involve an aggressive and widespread campaign to reach out to women in our community especially our teenagers to participate in our video workshops and TV productions. This project will focus on bringing women together of all ages especially targeting teenagers to learn production elements and to produce TV series for Public Access TV.
We plan to outreach to the various high schools, local colleges and community organizations; i.e. Manhasset/Great Neck Economic Opportunity Council, Science Museum of LI in the Town of North Hempstead to encourage women to join in this program.
The goal of this program will be:
To encourage women to "speak up" on issues and topics that are of concern to them.
To present to our audience the views and opinions of women of different ethnic, economic and social backgrounds.
To improve the media literacy of our program participants.
To train women to write, script and produce a TV program on a regular basis which will cablecast in the Town of North Hempstead and other areas in the cable system.
To have these programs added to the local libraries' video collection.
To have these programs used in the schools' programs as a way of focusing on the technical achievements of women.
To accomplish these goals, our production team will research current events and issues and how they pertain to women of all ages. Some possible topics might be; health issues for women, courses of study and possible careers, understanding finances, violence in the media, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders and other challenging concerns for women.
To launch this program, we need a project coordinator to guide and train these young women in technical video production and the equipment necessary to enable them to go out into their community and get the stories that are important to them. In the future, outreach, topic considerations and project progress will be accessible via the internet. This year we received two grants from New York State - from Assemblyman Tom DiNapoli and Senator Michael Balboni. Also this year, we received corporate sponsorship from Astoria Federal Savings.