• 
• return to News Blast archive menu

On May 17th, Anne Wilder will be joining the NCO as the Station Relations & Communications Manager. She brings with her a unique combination of skills; hands-on public television outreach experience and consumer marketing and public relations know-how.

For the past five years she has been a community outreach manager for Wisconsin Public Television. During this time she managed several award-winning initiatives, including a two year effort providing community forums on race and diversity. Prior to this she spent five years in marketing, overseeing marketing strategies, building brand awareness and providing accounts management.

As the NCO Station Relations & Communications manager, Anne will be in contact with stations often; collecting stories, searching for best practices and communicating results. If you haven’t met Anne yet, she will be attending the NCO Training in Dallas on May 18th, you can reach her at wilder@wpt.org.

SUPER WHY! Outreach Launch Grants Are Now Available Through NCO's PlanIT! Tool

Grant deadline: June 8, 2007

There are ten $4,000 outreach grants available. Contact Monica Medina (619-594-7152; mmedina@kpbs.org) for more information about the grants.

Click here to apply through PlanIT! If you don't have a PlanIT! account or need technical assistance, contact Cristina Hanson at hanson@wpt.org

SUPER WHY! is part of the Ready to Learn initiative, focused on helping at-risk kids to learn to read, and funded by a cooperative agreement of the U.S. Department of Education, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and PBS. This new PBS KIDS series is produced by Out of the Blue in association with Decode Entertainment

The NCO Outreach Pipeline: you've come to count on it and this year it's coming to you in a new and improved way. Delivered to your station via LIVE satellite, take this opportunity to bring your colleagues or partners into the room, see all the community engagement possibilities, call in questions, have access to new resources and start your planning.

So, hold the date, book the conference room and watch for a postcard telling you more in the weeks ahead.

NCO is working closely with The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation on their collaboration with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to deepen and expand the local significance of public broadcasters and improve the civic health of communities across the country. The aim of the Community Engagement Initiative is to find new ways to make public television and radio stations more significant local organizations, important to and deeply involved in the civic life of their communities. As part of the initiative, NCO staff recently attended the first "workspace" for grantee stations. For more information: http://www.theharwoodinstitute.org/

NCO has been working closely with PBS, WETA, CPB, and Florentine Films to build an online story collection tool called PBShare. The tool will be available to local stations through PBS Remote Control and will allow users to share personal stories and read, listen to, or comment on others' stories. The first use of the tool will be around The War as an opportunity for veterans and their families to share stories and memories locally and nationally. The tool will be adaptable for future projects as well.

If you attend PBS Showcase, stop by the PBS Interactive Center to check out the tool. If you're unable to attend Showcase, PBS will host a Web training session on how to implement PBShare on your station's local site.