With its podcasting booth built and equipped, the Lower Eastside Girls Club has taken new steps to get its podcasts online faster, conduct podcasting training for the club’s staff, and reschedule podcasting classes to better fit the girls’ schedules.
One result is that the club has set a new goal of producing and posting at least one podcast a week from club members, starting in October.
The National Association for Multi-Ethnics in Communications (NAMIC) has adopted the club as a special mentoring project and has matched a second-year $5,000 New Voices grant to continue the program.
Moreover, the podcasting program has prompted an anonymous donor, with a college radio background, to pledge $100,000 towards the building of a radio station in the club’s new headquarters. Groundbreaking for the new building will be next May.
The club has hired a part-time staff person with broadcast and technology skills who is doing staff training in July and will run the podcasting project with another instructor, starting in September. This will speed up the posting of podcasts, which has been delayed because of a reliance on university interns to help the students get their pieces online.
“The staff in place was able to produce and record a significant amount of program materials with the girls but were too dependent on outside … interns when it came to teaching the computer skills necessary to get the pieces edited and online,” said club director Lyn Pentecost. “So, lots of good material remains unposted at this point.”
Podcasting classes for the girls are being moved from weekdays to Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons to avoid conflicts with schoolwork. The girls will have the opportunity to cover club speakers and performers who are regularly scheduled for Friday nights. On Saturdays, the girls can work on individual projects with their journalism mentors.
The club’s podcasting efforts have not gone unnoticed by other organizations. Girls Inc. New York has planned a summer “Pod Camp” in collaboration with the Museum of Radio and Television.
Pentecost said she aims to have the podcasting program “impact community dialogue about important issues,” especially those in which youth are particularly invested, and “begin to cover NYC-based events and stories, along-side other independent media journalists.”
Eventually, she hopes to include the podcasts in an archive with thousands of photos to “serve as a community record of the changing lives of Lower East Side girls and families over the last decade.”
