What Listeners and Viewers Are Saying About Sound Partners Projects

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: as a long-time public health and community radio advocate, Sound Partners is the best funding initiative I have known--and I've been involved with many.
—Joni Eisenberg, Listening4YourHealth

"Your Web site has been invaluablein helping me keep abreast.
(The Weekly Digest) is really one of the few newsletters I read every time it comes to my box. I often save articles, forward the newsletter, and use your,information often to educate the community about health issues. Your site is so relevant and helpful in the work I do in our community. Thank you so much for putting together such a stellar resource.

—Amy Beechner-McCarthy
Executive Director Phelps County Community Partnership

"Youthtopia, a teen-hosted public radio show that began in 2001 (on KUSP-FM), founded a formal partnership this year with health advocacy nonprofit Population Services International and Community Television of Santa Cruz County, after receiving a $53,000 grant from the Benton Foundation.

The grant will let students keep doing what they do best - talk to other teens about contentious issues such as peer pressure, politics and teen pregnancy - with a new focus on community health topics specified by the grant.

Increased funding is also bringing more south county voices into the mix, PSI Program Manager Maria Magaña said.

"PSI is recruiting local kids, making them feel they can participate in something completely different," she said.

"Anytime you give a student an opportunity to have their voice heard, they get excited."

Watsonville High students Lizette Mendoza and Priscilla Garcia joined the group for the first time and excitedly threw out ideas on everything from relationships to high school fashion.

"I just like to talk a lot," Mendoza said, explaining her interest in radio.

Liz Ortega, microphone already in hand, also joined the meeting for the first time. Ortega, a senior at Watsonville High, has worked for three years as a 'Catz daily news anchor and also came armed with ideas.

"There are problems in schools every day. Maybe if teens get together and talk about it, we can do something about it," she said."
— Register-Pajaronian newspaper online

"I just happened to come across your forum as I was going through the channels last night. What a great program. I have been checking out the web sight today as well. Growing up in an alcoholic situation as a child, I can relate to a lot of what was being said. I commend everyone working with your program for what you are doing. Maybe, if more people happened to come across your program last night, there will be more people getting involved. Thanks!
—Donna, a viewer from Evansville, Indiana

During a "listen-in" radio show on advance directives at an area senior center, I spoke to a woman in her 90's who was concerned about making her health care decisions known. She had done a health care proxy but couldn't remember where she had put it, nor was she aware of her options regarding Hospice care. I spoke with her and "walked her through" the proxy form and she said she would call her daughter (proxy) about it. Last year, I received a call from the daughter who wanted to know about Hospice care for her mom. The mom died peacefully under Hospice care several weeks later.
—Rosemary Collins, Public Relations Manager, The Center for Hospice & Palliative Care, Buffalo, New York

"The Breast Cancer Monologues is a very beautiful, very powerful testimony to the diversity of experiences breast cancer patients go through and the amazing resiliency and humor that finds us just when we thought we were going to fall off the face of the earth without a trace. I lost my mother nine years ago to breast cancer and I never got to share my own breast cancer experience with her, the one person who would have made me laugh out loud at the insanity of it all. This program brings out the truth that I am part of a greater community of amazing women who have been given a second chance in this life, the chance to deeply know how precious and fleeting this world is . . . "
—a listener from Portland, Oregon

"We have had great fun doing the project with our KTEP-FM partner. I am extremely gratified by the work that both the UTEP and high school students have done in this project and the learning that has been afforded to the community as well. At least two to three times a day, I get calls about the clinic. They are coming from our radio call in show."
—Leticia Paez, Director, Institute for Border Community Health Education El Paso, Texas