It's Our Money

Name of Your Organization:

After All, afterschool program at Harlem Link Charter School

Overview of the Project - Please provide a brief description of the project.

Our afterschool program runs a News Crew club, a recorded broadcast by students for students (& adults!), open to anyone in our school from Kindergarten to 5th grade. During each newscast, students talk about current events, teach one another “how-tos”, and share how they’ve been coping and keeping busy during the closure. Supporting this project would help us run the program, providing home-use equipment for students to use in both virtual learning and recording, access to editing and recording programs (like the Storycorps app), and allowing for more recording sessions and more students to join; as well as 1:1 mentor sessions for our older student leaders to learn how to edit and record. Our plan by April 2021 is to prepare a documentary to submit to the People’s Film Festival in our neighborhood; News Crew members will be conducting student, teacher, and family interviews about how school and their lives have changed since COVID-19.

Which of the following issues does your project address?

1. Issue 1 - Addressing Mental Health
2. Issue 2 - Preparation for College and/or Career
3. Issue 3 - Youth Advocacy Promotion

Youth Engagement - Please explain how you will engage youth in the planning and implementation of the project.

Our afterschool program is youth-driven, with students selecting daily activities and leading select lessons and sessions.

• The News Crew is built out of our weekly “Just Talk” sessions, during which students can propose any topic or whatever’s on their mind, and their peers and the adults focus the day’s session on discussing it; students get to similarly suggest and vote on activities and topics to be in each newscast.
• Providing students at-home equipment would allow them the tools to fully contribute to recording sessions by not having to worry about bad audio or being with other family members while recording.
• As well, if selected, students will be able to choose the focus of their staff mentorship and what kind of digital tools and skills they’d like to learn.
• Finally, we hope to have students curate “self care kits” for their peers in the club, in their regular school-day classes, and in our cross-country pen pal program; students will be able to select “what students need” during the pandemic.

Budget - Your total project budget must equal $20,000 to be placed on the ballot for a youth vote. Please provide a brief description of what the funds would be used for to successfully implement your project. You will also need to download, fill in, and attach a full budget using this template.

If granted the $20,000, all expenses would be used to cover the staffing and materials needed to prep for, record, and edit our News Crew videos.

• All students in our group would be provided recording headsets, to be used with the at-home technology our school currently provides.
• A select group of our older student leaders would also receive basic video cameras to use at home, and in partnership with a staff mentor to learn a more advanced level of recording and editing.
• As a key component of News Crew is supporting safer spaces for conversation and socialization during COVID, students would also be curating mailed self-care kits and personalized letters to peers and their pen pals on “how to survive the pandemic”; the cost of materials and shipping would be covered by this project.

Timeline- Please describe the timeline for the implementation and completion of the project. All work for this project must be completed by June 30, 2021, which is the end of the city’s fiscal year and the deadline for the funds to be spent.

All activities would be during our existing daily afternoon sessions, held on Zoom Monday through Friday; all sessions would be complete by June 22nd, 2021 -- our last day of school. Creation of any in-person/mailed materials would be completed in mid-Spring, once we are able to safely socially distance in our school outdoor space.

Project Activity Alignment - How does your project align with at least one of the following topics:

1. Leadership skills development: organizing & advocacy trainings
2. Stewardship of public spaces: public parks, transportation, etc.
3. Youth and student engagement
4. Civic education and advocacy
5. Community outreach involving residents that have been historically underrepresented in or underserved by city government and its processes

Our students use the News Crew space to talk about topics important to them -- whether about questions of justice, coping during quarantine, sharing about their friends and family, or discussing favorite things to do. The newscast is shared with our entire school and partner networks, ensuring the “newscasters” have a platform to all adults and students in our school community.

What is your organization's area of focus?

1. Children and youth related
2. Advocacy and organizing
3. Arts and culture
4. Civic engagement
5. Education and literacy
6. Emergency management and disaster response
7. Employment and workforce development
8. Environment and sustainability
9. Faith-based
10. Food access
11. Health and medicine
12. Homelessness and/or affordable housing
13. Human rights
14. Human services
15. Immigrants and/or refugees
16. Justice related
17. Legal services
18. People with disabilities
19. Senior services
20. Women's issues

[your answer here]

Affirmations - Type \"YES\" below each statement to affirm that you are eligible to appear on the ballot for this process.

I confirm that my organization will be registered in the NYC Payee Information Portal and in PassPort, NYC’s online procurement system, in order to receive funding from the City of New York.

YES

I confirm that my organization is able to front the costs of implementing this project. Organizations will be paid based on deliverables. 

YES

Completion of Deliverables: I understand all deliverables must be completed by June 30th, 2021.

YES

I understand a condition of funding includes submission of a final report upon project completion, and participating in a debrief session with the CEC.

YES