2005 Community Development Award
Presented to Caring Community
WHYY
Nomination Narrative:
For the last five years, WHYY’s Caring Community has volunteered its time to help the station define community needs and outcomes, contribute to programming content, identify resources and promote WHYY’s programming relating to caregiving and end-of-life issues.
Desired Objective:
Enhance caregiver outreach and the end-of-life through educational programming and supportive services, especially through multimedia including radio, television and the web.
Costs:
Annual administrative cost is $600. Special projects are grant funded.
Results:
Members of Caring Community have worked closely with WHYY to plan conferences, shape the content of television and radio productions and webcasts, supply source material for major newspaper series and attract grant funding for major television productions.
Additional Information:
WHYY’s Caring Community is a coalition of 100 non-profit organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, faith-based organizations and health care systems in the Philadelphia region. The goal of Caring Community is to enhance caregiver outreach and the end-of-life through educational programming and supportive services – especially through multimedia including radio, television and the web.
For the last five years, the partner organizations in Caring Community have volunteered their time to help WHYY define community needs and outcomes, contribute to programming content, identify resources and promote the station’s programming. Members of the Caring Community have worked closely with the station to plan conferences, shape the content of television and radio productions and webcasts, supply source material for major newspaper series and attract grant funding for major television productions.
Monthly Caring Community meetings attract an average of 25 institutional representatives, while subcommittees form, as needed, to handle specific projects. Between meetings, communication is handled through email lists, and announcements are forwarded by members to an even wider network of professionals and institutions. A core group of member organizations have taken leadership roles in most projects; others in the group increase or decrease their participation depending on a topic’s relevancy to their mission.
The time, commitment and dialogue that Caring Community members provide has effectively helped WHYY raise community awareness through various efforts, including the following:
Town Meetings and Live Webcasts – On April 20, 2005, WHYY and Caring Community hosted and webcast their 5th annual forum around the Hospice Foundation of America’s Living with Grief teleconference, addressing Ethical Dilemmas at the End of Life. Each forum typically attracts 150 participants.
Television Productions – WHYY and its Caring Community coalition were awarded two rounds of collaborative grants by Sound Partners for Community Health, a national project of the Benton Foundation, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:
• Circle Of Love, three half-hour, award-winning television documentaries and 10 two-minute segments premiered in January 2004. The coalition defined the issues, identified stories, screened footage, compiled resources, promoted broadcast tune-in and is now designing training modules using the filmed stories.
Topics explored in the series include living with Alzheimer’s disease, caring for children with special needs and caring for aging parents.
• Circle Of Care will explore the role of the arts and humanities in improving communication among patients, family members and healthcare professionals. Planning is underway for broadcast in early 2006.
Outreach and Related Programming – The commitment of the Caring Community has resulted in successful efforts around national PBS specials On Our Own Terms, And Thou Shalt Honor and The Forgetting: A Portrait Of Alzheimer’s.
Measurable Impact – Consider these results of the Circle Of Love series:
• Approximately 77,600 households watched the three-part series
• More than 700 people called to request a Caregivers Resource Guide.
• 2,900 visits to program-related web pages in one month.
• 80 calls to The Alzheimer’s Association hotline mentioned in the broadcast (comments indicated that this was the first time some had reached out for information or support).
• An independent focus group study of Circle Of Love, funded by a challenge grant from the National Center for Outreach, found that the programs helped viewers understand social and clinical dimensions of problems facing caregivers, and provided an opportunity for them to reflect on their own experiences.
Presented to Caring Community
WHYY
Nomination Narrative:
For the last five years, WHYY’s Caring Community has volunteered its time to help the station define community needs and outcomes, contribute to programming content, identify resources and promote WHYY’s programming relating to caregiving and end-of-life issues.
Desired Objective:
Enhance caregiver outreach and the end-of-life through educational programming and supportive services, especially through multimedia including radio, television and the web.
Costs:
Annual administrative cost is $600. Special projects are grant funded.
Results:
Members of Caring Community have worked closely with WHYY to plan conferences, shape the content of television and radio productions and webcasts, supply source material for major newspaper series and attract grant funding for major television productions.
Additional Information:
WHYY’s Caring Community is a coalition of 100 non-profit organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, faith-based organizations and health care systems in the Philadelphia region. The goal of Caring Community is to enhance caregiver outreach and the end-of-life through educational programming and supportive services – especially through multimedia including radio, television and the web.
For the last five years, the partner organizations in Caring Community have volunteered their time to help WHYY define community needs and outcomes, contribute to programming content, identify resources and promote the station’s programming. Members of the Caring Community have worked closely with the station to plan conferences, shape the content of television and radio productions and webcasts, supply source material for major newspaper series and attract grant funding for major television productions.
Monthly Caring Community meetings attract an average of 25 institutional representatives, while subcommittees form, as needed, to handle specific projects. Between meetings, communication is handled through email lists, and announcements are forwarded by members to an even wider network of professionals and institutions. A core group of member organizations have taken leadership roles in most projects; others in the group increase or decrease their participation depending on a topic’s relevancy to their mission.
The time, commitment and dialogue that Caring Community members provide has effectively helped WHYY raise community awareness through various efforts, including the following:
Town Meetings and Live Webcasts – On April 20, 2005, WHYY and Caring Community hosted and webcast their 5th annual forum around the Hospice Foundation of America’s Living with Grief teleconference, addressing Ethical Dilemmas at the End of Life. Each forum typically attracts 150 participants.
Television Productions – WHYY and its Caring Community coalition were awarded two rounds of collaborative grants by Sound Partners for Community Health, a national project of the Benton Foundation, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:
• Circle Of Love, three half-hour, award-winning television documentaries and 10 two-minute segments premiered in January 2004. The coalition defined the issues, identified stories, screened footage, compiled resources, promoted broadcast tune-in and is now designing training modules using the filmed stories.
Topics explored in the series include living with Alzheimer’s disease, caring for children with special needs and caring for aging parents.
• Circle Of Care will explore the role of the arts and humanities in improving communication among patients, family members and healthcare professionals. Planning is underway for broadcast in early 2006.
Outreach and Related Programming – The commitment of the Caring Community has resulted in successful efforts around national PBS specials On Our Own Terms, And Thou Shalt Honor and The Forgetting: A Portrait Of Alzheimer’s.
Measurable Impact – Consider these results of the Circle Of Love series:
• Approximately 77,600 households watched the three-part series
• More than 700 people called to request a Caregivers Resource Guide.
• 2,900 visits to program-related web pages in one month.
• 80 calls to The Alzheimer’s Association hotline mentioned in the broadcast (comments indicated that this was the first time some had reached out for information or support).
• An independent focus group study of Circle Of Love, funded by a challenge grant from the National Center for Outreach, found that the programs helped viewers understand social and clinical dimensions of problems facing caregivers, and provided an opportunity for them to reflect on their own experiences.
