Happy Holidays and Happy New Year

Written by Kristofer Ríos Monday, 11 January 2010 17:18

Dearest Family and Supporters of PPH,                                                                                              

When 2009 began I was a brand new mother, my beautiful daughter Maya was just one month old. I was thrilled to nurture my new baby into the world, and I was also excited that the PPH family was helping out… “it takes a village…” never rang so true. Maya was blessed in her first year to have so much love and teaching from PPH staff, Rootz youth and CNPI members, all while they worked solidly to train dozens of new community journalists and produce hundreds of radio reports that aired locally and nationally!

Now we’re at the end of this eventful year. We at PPH, like so many of our colleagues in non-profit journalism and education, have faced one of our toughest years. It was a year in which demand for our programs increased: more public schools, more community organizing groups, and more individuals were knocking on our door asking to be trained and everyone wanted direct, community-based reporting on this economic crisis. Yet promised funding vanished. We were forced to look long and hard, plan wisely and creatively, and get our hustle on. We had to do more with less.

And I am so proud to say that the entire PPH team, from our incredibly passionate and committed staff in NY and DC, to our determined and enthusiastic youth and adult member-reporters, along with our valiant Board of Directors, have not just survived, we have thrived! It was only possible because you were there along the way, making donations, offering advice, and telling us in no uncertain terms that you wanted us to succeed.

You reminded us why this work is so important, whether it's to provide a missing angle on a major story or the only report on an otherwise unheard story. We started the year sending a team to cover the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama to the presidency. Led by CNPI reporter Rob Robinson, an organizer with Picture the Homeless in NYC, the team produced content that was distributed nationally, focusing on issues and perspectives critical to working people across America. We ended the year with our own staff member and reporter, Abdulai Bah, traveling home to Sierra Leone and Guinea to report from the front lines on the escalating political crisis, bringing his astute historical knowledge of West Africa to produce powerful journalism. And in between, we all plugged away, day in, day out, doing what we do best: training and collaborating with the country’s future journalists: communities traditionally excluded from the media, public school students, low-income workers, and immigrants. If you haven’t heard their voices yet, you will!

Our programs did so much this year:

Radio Rootz graduated students in six high schools across NY and DC, ushering in a new generation of story-tellers and budding journalists. Our summer programs created important and compelling radio features, intensively training over 30 youth in the art of radio documentary. Additionally, we graduated 8 youth from our Leadership Training Institute, and for the first year ever, our summer internship in NY was completely run by youth themselves.

The Digital Expansion Initiative (DEI) graduated its first class of youth fellows who spent six months in college-level seminar sessions learning about cell phone policy. They created multi-media infused curriculum to bolster the Rootz media literacy curriculum, teaching high school youth why they need to care about the policy governing their favorite mobile devices. DEI also convened policymakers and civic leaders to discuss local and state approaches to federal broadband funding, laying the groundwork for a citywide coalition led by PPH's community partners.

The Community News Production Institute (CNPI) graduated 12 new reporters from community-based organizations, and CNPI journalists reported and placed dozens of important stories on local and national radio outlets in both Spanish and English. CNPI reporters were on the spot to cover many critical stories and their monthly show on WBAI radio has developed a large listenership and many accolades for the breadth and diversity of issues tackled.

Our staff were recognized for our accomplishment and insights:

• Radio Rootz youth leader and trainer, Kyra Joseph – who we first met when she took our high school class when she was in 10th grade – spoke about media literacy and cell phone policy as part of the keynote presentation at the annual Allied Media Conference in Detroit.
• UNICEF asked Rootz Program Manager Sylvia Guerrero to be a judge by for their youth radio awards.
• Associate Director Jackie Kook was invited to present at forums on youth media in Chicago, Illinois, and Istanbul, Turkey.
• Policy Director Joshua Breitbart was called to provide expert testimony to City Council repeatedly, and policymakers took up many of PPH's recommendations on the digital television transition, open data standards, and net neutrality.
• Kristofer Rios broke down the arcane media policy lingo in numerous conference presentations and testimonials, helping us all understand why we should care.
• CNPI Senior trainer, Renee Feltz, became the only journalist to tell the heart-breaking story of a mentally retarded man on death row in Texas, published in the Texas Observer.
• DC Director, Leigh Ann Caldwell, continued each day to brilliantly shine a light on stories and perspectives from the halls of Congress that were critical to hundreds of thousands of poor and working people nationwide while simultaneously running Rootz DC, an impressive daily role model for our youth!
• And I was extremely honored to begin the year with a high accolade from our colleagues and friends at the North Star Fund who awarded me the Frederick Douglass News Prize for my pioneering journalism and training work.

We were only able to achieve such heights because you believed in our work. Whether you donated $10 or $1000, every donation spurred us forward and every dollar went straight into our radio training and production. We continue to need your support. We have exciting projects cooking for 2010, but we know there are many challenges ahead. We will keep you updated along the way.

As you get ready to celebrate the Holidays with your loved ones, please know that all of us in the PPH family are so grateful for your support and encouragement. Please consider making an additional year-end donation so we can start 2010 off right.

We wish you all much peace and joy for the coming year.

Sincerely,

Deepa Fernandes