By John T. Moore
Silicon Valley, Calif.
The Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation (MEAF) wanted to put together a multimedia presentation that gave insight into the organization's mission and told a brief story about each of its 14 grant recipients.
So in early summer 1999, foundation officials boxed up photos, film clips, narrated stories and brochures about MEAF and sent them to the Digital Clubhouse in Silicon Valley, where a group of creative young people, ages 14-22, were waiting to take charge.
The Digital Clubhouse is a place any member of the community can come to learn about networked multimedia in a "user friendly" environment. In addition to the California clubhouse, the Digital Clubhouse of Silicon Alley has been created in New York.
The Silicon Valley kids who received the information from MEAF make up the Digitally Abled Producers Project (DAPP), one of MEAF's grant recipients. About half of DAPP's members are mentally or physically challenged.
During the next six weeks, the DAPPers used the MEAF information to put together a CD-ROM about the foundation that incorporated all of the elements MEAF was looking for in its presentation.
MEAF, established in 1991 to help kids with disabilities, initially wanted the program for its annual philanthropy workshop it runs for Mitsubishi Electric employees in Washington, D.C., says Rayna Aylward, executive director of the foundation.
But the completed CD-ROM from DAPP is what Rayna Aylward, executive director of MEAF, calls a "stand-alone masterwork" that will now be used as the foundation's annual report.
"It beautifully weaves together the stories of the foundation and its nonprofit partners, while telling the story of how the CD-ROM itself was made," Rayna says.
The creation of that CD-ROM was a test project for DAPP, which also takes place at the New York clubhouse. It demonstrated that disabled youth were able to work together with mainstreamed youth to produce a networked multimedia program for CD or videotape.
The New York and Silicon Valley clubhouses use donated computers, software and scanners from companies including Apple Computer, IBM Corp., Adobe Systems, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, NTT Data Communications and Macromedia.
It's a method that the members are replicating as part of the group's series "Share of Voice, Share of Mind, Share of Heart". The DAPPers are refining their technology skills by helping three different groups of people tell their stories.
The youth are chronicling the stories of seven women fighting breast cancer, from the day they were diagnosed until now. The women are writing scripts, narrating and creating illustrations for the program. The multimedia presentation with all of the women will be shown in October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Next on the DAPP agenda are the stories of World War II veterans. The veterans will use photos and narrations to tell stories about being sent to battle. Part of the multimedia series will include women who kept the home fires burning during the war, and history-makers like the Tuskegee Airmen, the first group of African-American combat pilots. These multimedia programs will debut on Veterans Day in November.
The final theme will debut in December and will have 10 nonprofits telling their stories about how their groups have made a difference in the community.
Although technology is at the heart of each project, Warren Hegg, president and founder of the Digital Clubhouse Network, says that's only a small part of the DAPP mission.
"We are reminding kids that there is much more to the application of technology than just point and click," Hegg says. "We are preparing them to teach and we are reminding them that the community comes first, not just as an afterthought."
By working with clients like World War II veterans, for example, the youth are being taught storytelling skills, while understanding they are a part of a bigger community.
Before the creation of DAPP, the core of the Digital Clubhouse in Silicon Valley, Hegg and his colleagues began to see that communities may soon face the danger of losing its kids to the Internet. He says the Internet is a great tool, but it can separate those using it from the rest of society.
"It's very much about putting a human face on technology," Hegg says. "If we're not careful, these Jedi Knights might find themselves as Darth Vader."
The Digital Clubhouse, though, allows members to develop and maintain computer, Internet and multimedia skills, while working in a community environment where they can both learn and teach.
The clubhouse grew out of the need for a "digital oasis," Hegg says. The communities around Silicon Valley needed a place that was as easily accessible physically as the World Wide Web is virtually.
The clubhouse welcomes a community's "haves and have nots," its physically and emotionally challenged young people, the elderly and really, anyone else.
The community is brought together for cross-generational training in multimedia and story telling. At the same time, disabled youth and youth at risk are given the opportunity to get back into a community where they can make a lasting contribution.
Storytelling -- not technology -- is the connection that can bring an 82-year-old grandmother together with a Hispanic man and a family of a child with Downs Syndrome, Hegg says. Each has life experience they can pass along.
"It's a powerful bonding experience," Hegg says. "It's a learning experience -- not only learning about technology, but learning about each other and about life."
The DAPP program has three main goals for its youth. It gives the students the ability to work together while accepting and respecting each others' disabilities or differences. It teaches them as much as possible about running the clubhouse and its technology. It also gives the kids responsibility for the program by allowing each student to foster or mentor two other youths coming into the program.
DAPP works in three to four cycles per year. During the first three months, the kids come together to learn the technology skills needed to create multimedia presentations.
After the youth get through the initial cycle, many stay and assist in the teaching of the program's new recruits. If they complete the second cycle, they are put into a talent pool that the Digital Clubhouse can pay to be teachers and assistants.
Ideally, Hegg says, 100-200 young people per year come out of the Clubhouse with the skills to make a positive contribution within the community.
Both clubhouses are a prototype in which social entrepreneurs or pre-existing groups can replicate their success in cities across the country.
Hegg says that both clubhouses operate on an annual budget of less than $100,000. Organizers wanted to show that a working model of DAPP could be possible on a limited budget, although he does realize that building a completely new network for such a small amount is unrealistic.
Technology is not the answer of all of a community's problems, Hegg says. The answer comes in what the technology is used to do or create.
"Gutenberg's press was not the answer -- the answer is what lay in the pages of some of those books," he says.
John T. Moore can be reached at
johntm@mindspring.com
