Strengthening Community, Tips

The Online News Association's Online Journalism Awards annually highlight the best work done by interactive news professionals. Four projects of the 2003 winners and finalists — the Los Angeles Times, Beliefnet, the Rochester Democrat
& Chronicle, and the 9/11 Sonic Memorial team — are now part of a
Poynter online learning module. Part of Poynter's News
University, this module digs deep into how these multimedia projects were planned and produced. Flash producer Leena Pendharkar did video interviews with the producers, examined planning documents and budgets, and reviewed website traffic as part of the module. Covers multimedia interactive editorial content technique and strategy. Requires free registration.

Contentbank is a project of The Children's Partnership with three major goals: To identify what online content low-income users need, examples of what exists, and what still needs to be created; To make it easier for community-based organizations and the individuals they serve to create their own content; and To encourage the public and private sectors to develop useable content for low-income and underserved Americans. The Contentbank Web site is designed to be the “first stop” for information and resources about online content for low-income and underserved community users. This Web site is full of free resources and ideas for community-based organizations.

Here's the cookbook for creating educational materials to extend the life of your broadcast programming. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) hosts this Web site that offers detailed guidance for novice and seasoned television producers of adult and children's programming. These are the kinds of outreach plans that funders want to see in your proposal.

The Education Development Center (EDC) provides "Tours" of its online Web resources by topic, including some related to health. For example, School Health tour will take you to an article about a recent senate briefing, a school curriculum for grades 6-12, a Web site for teachers and community groups, and descriptions of EDC projects.

At home, work, school or play, policies determine the nature of our surroundings and our actions within them. For this reason, policy is a meaningful way to protect and improve health. Developed by The Center for Health Improvement (CHI) in conjunction with national experts, Health Policy Coach equips you with the tools, strategies and information necessary to create policy change in your community.

The Trust for America's Health offers a clear and succinct publication encouraging individuals to become health advocates with an emphasis on advocating for individuals or communities suffering from environmentally-related illnesses. The publication includes 5 steps to take, a sample letter to follow, and case histories. (pdf)

Stanford University has published a model curriculum that offers strategies and lesson plans to help students tackle "real world" problems that matter to them and learn valuable research and academic skills. "Based on the premise that youth have important insights into school and community improvement, this project guides youth through a training process to help them both collect and share relevant data, as well as become partners with adults at the decision making table." The 114 page .pdf handbook includes lesson plans, guidelines for collecting data, worksheets for evaluation, and lessons learned from the pilot project.