There are three organizations that I am considering to partner with for a project that can be completed within the semester timeframe.

They are:
1-Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion (IBA): http://www.iba-etc.org/
This organization is the product of the founding of the Villa Victoria affordable housing development in the hear of the South End. They are responsible for social development programs within the community. Villa Victoria came out of the grassroots community efforts to save their neighborhood from urban renewal in during the ’60s. As an immigrant community they successfully received development rights of parcel 19 and imbued the area with a Puerto Rican design. The history of this neighborhood is rich and a positive example of the impact a latino community can have on a city.
 

2-Centro Presente: http://www.cpresente.org/
When I first moved to Cambridge I wanted to volunteer at a Latino based community organization. I found Centro Presente, an organization started in the early 1980s to support the influx immigration of central americans escaping civil war and dictatorial regimes. They support immigration and immigrant rights. Because my family is from El Salvador and came to the US under similar circumstances I am particularly interested in the goals and mission of this organization and would love to work with them.

3-Unskilled Laborers United: They do not have a website.
NO LOGO AVAILABLE
When I went to visit the Occupy Boston site in downtown this organization had a table by the campsites. They were providing information to the campers and visitors about their organization to gain support, donations, and volunteers. They help about 100 families in the Dorchester and Roxbury area through legal, translation, and employees training services. Additionally they provide food for the families during the holiday season to ensure they can enjoy good family dinners.

The community I hope to work with will be a Boston based community which we would have chance to communicate with the members in a face to face style. Our first week readings show that in codesign, local community is considered as codesigners rather than consumers or test subject. The design process must actively involve the local community.  Thus, face to face communication is important for the success of a codesign project. Second, I hope my expertise has a good match with the need of the community. As a communication and media researcher, among the current list of potential community partners, I thought Press Pass TV has a good fit with my expertise. (http://presspasstv.dreamhosters.com/about-us/) I am also interested to work with some NGOs who have interest to web2.0 technologies because my experience in Web2.0 and communication capacity training in NGO2.0 project will be helpful for the organization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 )

I am hoping to work with youth from the greater Boston area. I am interested in many intersecting issues, such as educational access and youth empowerment, and I have worked with low-income youth in the Los Angeles. If possible, I would like to continue working with youth from low-income backgrounds. The community-based organization that I would like to work with is Press Pass TV. I have worked with Press Pass TV in the past during the development of AAGO, the citizen youth mobile application being developed with the Center for Civic Media. I really admire Press Pass TV’s emphasis on critical media practice and youth empowerment. 

At the current time, I do not have one community-based organization to which I am wed.  However, upon watching the video about Food Justice being promulgated at Press Pass TV through the creation of community gardens, I became interested in their mission: http://presspasstv.dreamhosters.com/2011/10/27/grow-or-die/.  I particularly had interest in this organization, because I have worked with adolescents for over a decade, and I want to support any cause which helps them cultivate their voice in a productive way.  Furthermore, I think that the way PressPass TV is working, the demonstration of such voice could also allow adolescents to help create better dialogue with adults by communicating their needs and desires in way such that it will help them better engage with youth.

After the first half of the class, which was taken up by a course overview, a round of introductions, and a discussion of logistics, we created a collaborative drawing of ‘design:’

We did one round of drawing, then stopped to discuss what each person created, then did a second round based on adding elements we thought were missing.

Keywords from the first explanation stage: cooperative learning, conversation (+1), foundational support, creating object, hypodermic needle, extraction, inspiration, creative commons, dialoge, local community, disconnect, no time, synthesis, peer production, question/need, commons, organic process, inferences, conflict, pedagogy.

Keywords from the second stage: sabotage, big picture, vision, capital, perfect/good, different processes, phases, project evolution, consensus, space & time, typology, time +1, environmental resources, influence, community access, food, governance, constraints (law, social norms), emerging structure, structural forces & constraints.

I’m excited for the beginning of the new semester, and pleased to launch the Civic Media Codesign Studio course. This will be a space for students interested in working with community-based organizations to develop civic media projects that connect to grounded strategies for social transformation. The studio will also be a space for shared inquiry into the theory, history, best practices, and critiques of various approaches to community inclusion in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. There are still spots available, so if you’re interested sign up for CMS.362/862. The studio meets Fridays, 1-4pm, in E15-363.