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Community Action News Network seeks Advisory Board Members

I am the Community Outreach Organizer for RightRides for Women's Safety, a NYC-based non profit. Our mission is to build safer communities by ending harassment and sexual assault. We accomplish this through community organizing, offering direct service programs, plus fostering greater safety awareness and individual empowerment in our related educational programs.

I'm asking for your knowledge and expertise to make our newest program, the Community Action News Network, possible.

The Community Action News Network (CANN) will help young people create by-youth, for-youth video content for a dedicated YouTube.com channel to address the insidious problems of gender-based oppression and sexual assault. CANN will be an empowering, primary prevention effort covering these issues with an open exchange of information via new media platforms and video, while showcasing young people and groups taking action to stop sexual violence.

CANN is seeking women and men involved in any aspect of film, television or media production, education, or gender violence awareness and education to be a part of its Advisory Board. Board members, with their expert knowledge, will create the curriculum of CANN that will be followed by its participating schools and programs. They will also review submissions, help expand the program and identify new media channels to distribute CANN. The Advisory Board will be an invaluable resource to CANN's participants: it is from their guidance that young people will become better equipped to communicate their opinions, take charge of their media, and create videos which not only empower themselves, but also those who watch them.

The first Advisory Board meeting will be held by mid-July in New York City, and will discuss what tools, information, resources, time and guidelines are needed to make CANN a success in New York City High Schools, in order to have a complete CANN Program Guide to offer schools by the end of August. The Board will meet once a month thereafter to pick topics, review submissions, and work on expanding the program itself and its audience. The anticipated time commitment of being a Board member is 2-3 hours a month.

Attached is more information about CANN including the proposed format, distribution, and the schools and organizations we are approaching at this stage. If you would like to be a Board Member, would like to be involved with CANN in some other way, or know of someone whom I should contact, please feel free to contact me by email at kasia@rightrides.org, or by phone at 718-522-0822.

Sincerely,

Kasia Mychajlowycz
RightRides for Women's Safety
kasia@rightrides.org
718-522-0822

Starts	07/16/2008
Ends	10/16/2008
Issues	Gender/Women, Media, Youth, Sexual Harrassment, Violence against women, Censorship, Digital Divide, Digital Media, Fair Representation, Media Literacy
Homepage	www.rightrides.org
Contact	kasia@rightrides.org