Database, Website and Video production equipment

Update Communications Technology

N/A

$8,340

Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio (Movement for Justice in El Barrio) is a multi-issue, immigrant-led community organization dedicated to organizing the immigrants of East Harlem to lead the way to social justice. This year, we will continue our work helping tenants in East Harlem organize themselves into tenant associations to fight for housing justice while combating the negative effects of gentrification in the neighborhood. At the same time, we will launch a parallel program to expand our organizing to take on our new issue. Through a comprehensive and community driven issue identification process the immigrant community in El Barrio identified the failure of the Mexican Consulate to provide adequate and decent services to their constituency as the most serious problem confronting their community. This year we will significantly expand the scope of our activities by launching our new campaign to demand that the Mexican Consulate protect the human rights of its constituency and provide decent and respectful services. Through these efforts we will continue building an organization that relies on participatory democracy in its task planning process while encouraging leadership development through a skills building and political education program that addresses the root causes of inequality and injustice.

With this expansion, Movement for Justice in El Barrio has arrived at crucial moment in its development, both organizationally and in terms of our technological capacity. In our first two years, we have made huge strides in the founding of an organically expanding multi-issue organization and achieved many lasting victories with the immigrant community here in El Barrio. The rapid growth of the organization has stretched our current technological resources to their limits. We are asking for a $10,000 grant to support a three-part expansion in our technological capacity: database development, web site development and video production equipment. This essential technological expansion will be instrumental in allowing Movement for Justice in El Barrio to expand successfully and sustainably into its next phase as a growing multi-issue organization.

Database Development

We currently do not have any database software and our current arrangement for accommodating our rapidly expanding base of contacts in the community is generating an unwieldy system of Excel and Word files. With a database system customized to accommodate our needs as a growing grassroots organization and the training and technical support necessary to maximize its benefits, we would: improve our contact and efficiency in the community in El Barrio, easily coordinate specific and directed press work, and manage and track the giving tendencies of a growing individual donor base, among many other things.

Over the past two years we have collected approximately 1000 contacts. We have 255 active members. In addition, through our comprehensive Community Driven Issue Identification Process, we collected 782 votes and approximately 400 contacts from community members who voted in the process. The votes collected provide information on the top three most important issues/problems facing the immigrant community in El Barrio for each of the community members who voted. This spring we will be launching massive outreach efforts as we kick off our new campaign against the Mexican Consulate. This new campaign will bring in a significant new wave of members. With a database that could track member and community contacts and information, we could sort members by:

• Building address
• Landlord
• Interest in particular issues confronting the community
• Campaign involvement
• Leadership potential
• Time/hours of availability
• Event participation
• Ethnic and socioeconomic background

In this way we would vastly increase our efficiency in reaching out to our constituency and our members as we diversify our program to go beyond housing justice.

Our current donor base includes the contacts of community members, friends, activists and allies. As we expand our program to fulfill our mission as a multi-issue social justice organization it is necessary that we track specific characteristics of the individuals in our donor base, including:

• Specific issue interest
• Giving patterns
• Motivation for giving

In addition, database software would lessen the time consumed in direct mailing, solicitation letters and the follow-ups and thank you cards necessary for cultivating our donor base.

We have a comprehensive collection of press contacts and are constantly building on our relationships with reporters, editors and press outlets. Through the networking of our database to make it available to all staff members, we could more specifically direct our press efforts and share information among staff around our relationship building with the press.

Website Development

Due to lack of Internet access in low-income communities, our organizing in our target community does not rely directly on the Internet to reach our constituency and consequently has not been the focus of our work thus far. However, over our first two years, we have managed to raise an impressive profile among local press and activists and we have reached out to many of our allies and supporters outside of the community through email and activist listserves. We have reached a point in our organizational development at which it has become necessary to establish a centralized presence on the Internet. We currently rely on a shared yahoo account for our organizational email, in addition to providing greater visibility and a source of centralized information about our organization, a website would enable us to have multiple email accounts under a domain that reflected our organization’s name. Through our website, we could host a blog carrying photos, articles, and current news about our activities as well as set up our own listserve for interested allies and supporters, rather than relying on cumbersome mass emails. A website would enable us to encourage giving through our individual donor base by facilitating quick and easy donations through a paypal account.

Video Production Equipment

We recently completed a small promotional video that consisted of interviews with our leaders in which they described why they left their home countries, what problems they face here in NYC and how they fight to obtain justice. The video served an invaluable tool in our leadership development program, our organizing activities and our fundraising. The interviewees were given the time and the support to articulate the myriad of problems that face them on a transnational level and describe how they strive to overcome those problems through their struggle for justice in NYC. New members and community leaders have watched this video and seen struggles similar to their own documented, shared, and valued within a broader community. They have gained a familiarity with what has come before them in the history of the organization and been inspired by the victories of their neighbors. We have organized public forums to screen our video and held fundraising events using the video as a centerpiece to illustrate our work. We scraped the video together using borrowed equipment and software that has since then become unavailable to us. We would like to build on our video and involve more leaders and members in the process of documenting their own struggles and controlling their own history.

We believe that communities should have the means to control the telling of their own history. As an organization, we wish to have video equipment available to document our activities and growth as an organization to free us from a reliance on the commercial media in documenting and interpreting our struggle. For these purposes we are asking for a digital video camera, digital video editing software, hardrive space for editing, and a digital projector to share our videos with the community and our supporters. Our organizers have been trained to use professional camera equipment and editing software through the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. With this equipment we will be able to add a new facet to our leadership development program that would allow interested leaders to attend training workshops that will discuss the importance of documenting our struggles and recording our own histories and train leaders to operate the equipment.

Basic Equipment Needs

For the past two years, we have depended on a small, shared office space in St. Cecilia’s church, with the expansion of our membership and our staff capacity we recently moved into larger, independent space where we will need to provide our own equipment. We raised the money for one laptop and have otherwise depended on the personal laptops of our staff members. We will be expanding our staff this year. For that reason, we have also requested money for basic technological assistance including two desktop computers and Microsoft Office for two computers. We are also requesting money to acquire an organizational cell phone plan that would begin with a PDA for our director to enable mobile Internet access and immediate and uninterrupted access to our database of contacts. As we expand, and acquire more funding we will acquire cell phones for all of our organizers.

The requested technology will greatly increase the efficiency, reach, and depth of all aspects of our organizing program. The three requested technology expansions: the database, website and video production equipment will all be essential tools as we expand to become a multi-issue organization. As described above, we are about to take on the issue of the abusive services provided by the Mexican Consulate for a community that is dangerously dependent on their services due to a lack legal documentation here in the U.S.

Our new database will facilitate a smooth transition to a multi-issue agenda by streamlining the process of integrating a wave of new members from our new issue, while at the same time tracking membership involvement in our different programs, campaigns, committees and leadership development and skills building workshops. One important aspect of our database will be that we will be able to centralize member, donor and press information so that it can be easily shared and updated by all staff members. From this centralized database, we will be able to easily print customized phone lists, facilitate mass mailings, and focus outreach efforts.

Our website will provide us with a current and centralized presence on the Internet in order to reach out to potential allies, supporters and donors. We will set up customized email accounts, a paypal account for easy donations and a blog to post articles, photos and videos. These features will significantly advance our organizing efforts by enabling more efficient fundraising and networking among outside supporters and organizations.

We have experienced the vast potential that video has in encouraging leadership growth, recruiting and integrating new members, and fundraising. Owning our own equipment will enable us to continue the work we have already begun in the community creating our own videos, documenting our struggle and development, and sharing our work with the community and the public.

We have included in our budget the funds needed for consulting fees and staff time for basic training for staff members on operating and maintaining our database and website. In addition, we have researched possible database providers and website developers that would offer ongoing technical support. Our staff has been trained to operate professional camera equipment and one of our organizers is proficient in both IMovie and Final Cut Pro. In addition, we have developed a relationship with Manhattan Neighborhood Network on which we could rely on for limited technological support.

Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio regularly evaluates our actions through our monthly Encuentro de Lideres meetings and throughout our leadership building exercises. We will evaluate the benefits of our new technology by evaluating how it advances the goals of our three programs: our leadership and political education program, our housing justice program and our Mexican consulate program.

All three of the technology expansions are intended to broaden the scope and reach of our efforts in East Harlem and in the public at large. Therefore, we will evaluate the ease and efficiency of our new database program in adding and tracking members and allies based on the plan we develop with our consultant. We will keep track of the number of hits we receive on our website, donations received through the website, and the reaction generated as a result of the information posted. We will monitor attendance at video screenings and as well as record our successes in fundraising through our videos. We will also judge the success of our video efforts by the number of members and leaders who make their voices heard through video and the number of members and leaders who learn to operate the equipment.