For Immediate Release
January 18th, 2008

Contact: Betty Yu, Community Outreach & Media Department
Phone: 212.757.2670 ext. 346

NEW YORK, NY (Jan. 18th) -- Now celebrating its 15th anniversary of grantmaking, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) is pleased to announce that 20 community-based groups will receive $170,000 and hands-on training to support the production of public access television programming.

MNN’s Annual Grant Program enables organizations to increase and expand their media capacity by integrating media-making tools into their organization’s mission while also reaching out to a broader constituency. It also provides hundreds of hours of programming for the channels that reflects the borough’s diversity.

In 2008, twenty organizations representing a wide array of cultural, youth, community-based, media arts, immigrant, social service and social justice groups in Manhattan, were awarded grants ranging from $2,000 to $15,000 in three categories.

They include: Art For Change, Children for Children, Coalition of Institutionalized, Aged and Disabled (CIAD), Disabilities Network of NYC, Educational Video Center, Esperanza del Barrio, Immigrant Social Services, Union Settlement and Vision Urbana.

Since its inception, MNN’s Community Media Grant Program has awarded $3 million dollars to over one hundred non-profit organizations. These groups have produced groundbreaking video projects, bringing thousands of hours of informational, cultural, artistic and community-based programming to MNN’s four public access channels.

The groups funded in the past represent the rich cultural, ethnic and racial diversity across Manhattan – from Alianza Dominicana in Washington Heights to Chica Luna Productions in East Harlem to the Junior Scholars Program at the Schomburg Center in Central Harlem to Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association in Chinatown.

Other organizations funded since 1993 include the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center, the Lower East Side Girls Club, National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Picture the Homeless, Housing Works, Harlem School of the Arts, Women Make Movies, American Indian Community House, Nuyorican Poets Café, and Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. To read the full list of grantees from the last 15 years go to: http://www.mnn.org/en/grantees

The following is a complete list of the grant areas and grantees funded this year-in 2008:

The Curatorial Media grant area recognizes the vast local and national resources of new and archival programming that breaks with traditional media boundaries. The grant provides organizations with the necessary resources to curate innovative and thematic presentations within contemporary contexts that help inform and educate specific communities and the general public. These special curated programs will be cablecasted on MNN’s public access channels. Funded groups this year are: Sprout, ACT UP Oral History Project, Art For Change, Deep Dish TV, Educational Video Center on behalf of Urban Visionaries Film Festival, Paper Tiger TV, and Rooftop Films.

Tactical Media Toolkit grant area is designed to provide organizations with media resources to respond to community needs. The grant provides a strategic video production and post-production equipment package to the organization, enabling them to produce broadcast television programming virtually anywhere. Funding groups are Children for Children, City At Peace, Disabilities Network of NYC, Immigrant Social Services, Kids Creative, The New York Independent Media Center, and Union Settlement.

The Training and Production grant area is designed to provide organizations with the resources to develop a self-sufficient media production capability. The grant provides for a trainer/mentor to work directly with an organization. The grant also places video production and post-production equipment at the organizations facility. The grant is designed to encourage the integration of media within the overall framework of the organization, develop a level of sustainable media capacity and produce programming for playback on MNN’s public access channels and other venues. Children's Art Carnival, Coalition of Institutionalized, Aged and Disabled (CIAD), Esperanza del Barrio, Families for Freedom, People's Production House, and Vision Urbana have received this grant.

Maria Muentes, an organizer of Families for Freedom and a grant recipient of the MNN Training & Production Grant said, “The MNN Community media grant will advance the voices of immigrant families facing and fighting deportation, by allowing them to get their voices to the public. Immigrant families speaking out about deportation is at the heart of everything we do, this will provide us with a new medium.”

Decisions were made by a panel made up of community media advocates, media arts professionals, board and staff members who subscribe to MNN’s mission: To ensure the ability of Manhattan residents to exercise their First Amendment rights and create opportunities for mutual communication, education and artistic expression. The review panel considers issues of project sustainability, participation of the community represented, and the viability of the proposed budget in their final grantmaking decisions.

For a detailed description of these projects, please visit
http://www.mnn.org/en/grantees