The Movement / Media Research and Action Project (MRAP), founded in 1986 and operating out of Boston College, provides training and technical assistance to community and grassroots organizations. In collaboration with community and grassroots organizations, they address the problems of negative interaction between community and mass media and the lack of resources community organizations and groups experience when they attempt to change negative stereotypical images of their communities portrayed in the mass media.
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. The university's name reflects its early history as a liberal arts college and preparatory school in Dorchester. It is a member of the 568 Group and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Its main campus is a historic district and features some of the earliest examples of collegiate gothic architecture in North America.
William Gamson, former president of the American Sociological Association and professor of sociology at Boston College, and graduate student colleagues at Boston College founded MRAP in 1986. MRAP develops networks of community non-profit, labor, and advocacy organizations with whom MRAP conducts collaborative action research on media related topics. MRAP began funded projects of direct action with community organizations in 1997 after several months of collaborative planning with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute's Empowerment and Change Project (MLRI).
William Anthony Gamson is a professor of Sociology at Boston College, where he is also the co-director of the Media Research and Action Project (MRAP). He is the author of numerous books and articles on political discourse, the mass-media and social movements from as early as the 1960s. His influential works include Power and Discontent (1968), The Strategy of Social Protest (1975), What's News (1984), and Talking Politics (2002), as well as numerous editions of the simulation game SimSoc.
The American Sociological Association (ASA), founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society, is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Most members work in academia, but about 20 percent work in government, business, or non-profit organizations.
Sociology is the scientific study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.
MRAP's primary focus of its work is with non-profit organizations in New England. However, MRAP also collaborates with two national organizations offering technical assistance, training, and support for the development of public policy to community organizations and groups around the country. These organizations, the Preamble Center and Grassroots Policy Project of New York City and Washington D.C. share MRAP's vision of providing strategic development training to community organizations. MRAP's vision includes the development of a national media resource network (the Community Media and Internet Resource Network) which includes internet and organizational links to other media research centers on the country.
New England is a geographical region composed of six states of the northeastern United States: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north, respectively. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the south. Boston is New England's largest city as well as the capital of Massachusetts. The largest metropolitan area is Greater Boston with nearly a third of the entire region's population, which also includes Worcester, Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Providence, Rhode Island.
The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States and thus also in the state of New York. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
APNIC is the Regional Internet address Registry (RIR) for the Asia-Pacific region. It is one of the world's five RIRs and is part of the Number Resource Organization.
Supportive housing is a combination of housing and services intended as a cost-effective way to help people live more stable, productive lives, and is an active "community services and funding" stream across the United States. Supportive housing is widely believed to work well for those who face the most complex challenges—individuals and families confronted with homelessness and who also have very low incomes and/or serious, persistent issues that may include substance use disorders, mental health, HIV/AIDS, chronic illness, diverse disabilities or other serious challenges to stable housing. Supportive housing can be coupled with such social services as job training, life skills training, alcohol and substance use disorder treatment, community support services, and case management to populations in need of assistance. Supportive housing is intended to be a pragmatic solution that helps people have better lives while reducing, to the extent feasible, the overall cost of care. As community housing, supportive housing can be developed as mixed income, scattered site housing not only through the traditional route of low income and building complexes.
WhyHunger is a non-profit registered 501(c)(3) organization working to end hunger and poverty by connecting people to nutritious, affordable food and by supporting grassroots solutions that inspire self-reliance and community empowerment. The organization is based on the belief that solutions and innovations are often found in the grassroots, and therefore works with more than 8,000 community-based groups across the world. These groups help people to help themselves through food production, job-training programs, nutrition education, community economic development, healthcare workshops, youth programming, leadership development and more.
Community youth development (CYD) is a philosophy emphasizing the symbiotic nature of youth development to community development by situating the two practices in a common framework. CYD combines the natural instincts of young people as they desire to create change in their surrounding environments by developing partnerships between youth-related organizations and community development agencies to create new opportunities for youth to serve their communities while developing their personal abilities.
Capacity building is the process by which individuals and organizations obtain, improve, and retain the skills, knowledge, tools, equipment and other resources needed to do their jobs competently or to a greater capacity. Capacity building and capacity development are often used interchangeably.
The term citizen media refers to forms of content produced by private citizens who are otherwise not professional journalists. Citizen journalism, participatory media and democratic media are related principles.
Internews Network, now Internews, is an international non-profit organization.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance or ILSR is a nonprofit organization and advocacy group that provides technical assistance to communities about local solutions for sustainable community development in areas such as banking, broadband, energy, and waste through local purchasing. The organization was founded in 1974. ILSR has two main offices, one in Washington, D.C., and the other in Minneapolis, MN.
The United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) is a high-level intergovernmental policy forum. The forum includes all United Nations Member States and Permanent Observers, the UNFF Secretariat, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, Regional Organizations and Processes and Major Groups.
The National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) is a national nonprofit dedicated to creating safe and healthy housing for America’s families. Its research often provides scientific basis for federal, state, and local policies and programs. NCHH trained nearly 45,000 individuals in healthy housing practices from 2005 through 2014. NCHH's advocacy efforts aim to ensure that health is considered in housing policy and that housing is valued as a determinant of health. Through partnerships, NCHH seeks to reduce health disparities in low-income communities and communities of color. Founded by Fannie Mae in 1992, it was originally known as the National Center for Lead-Safe Housing. NCHH's main office is based in downtown Columbia, Maryland.
Village Earth: The Consortium for Sustainable Village-Based Development (CSVBD) DBA: Village Earth is a publicly supported 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Fort Collins, Colorado, US. The organization works for the empowerment of rural and indigenous communities around the world with active projects with the Oglala Lakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the Shipibo-Konibo of the Amazon region of Peru, India, Cambodia, and Guatemala. Village Earth is associated with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) at Colorado State University. Village Earth is also the publisher for the Appropriate Technology Library and The Appropriate Technology Sourcebook, a low-cost rural-development resource initiated by Volunteers in Asia in 1975 but transferred to Village Earth in 1995.
WikiEducator is an international online community project for the collaborative development of learning materials, which educators are free to reuse, adapt and share without restriction. WikiEducator was launched in 2006 and is supported by the non-profit Open Education Resource Foundation (OER). A variety of learning resources are available on WikiEducator: direct instructional resources such as lesson plans and full courses, as well as learning-support resources, such as individual school portals and funding proposals.
End Poverty Now (EPN) is a Canadian non-profit based in Montreal, with chapters located across the country, dedicated to alleviating poverty globally. EPN operates through two main streams: grassroots projects and educational initiatives.
The Virginia Literacy Foundation (VLF), is an organization whose mission is to reduce adult illiteracy in Virginia by providing funding and technical support to private, volunteer adult literacy organizations that teach low level literacy adults to read and write with one-on-one instruction and tutoring. The VLF was founded by Jeannie Baliles, Virginia's First Lady from 1986 to 1990, and founding director Mark Emblidge, and was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization in 1987. The VLF supports grass roots organizations via challenge grants, direct consultation, and program development training with public partners like The Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. The VLF also works in partnership with public institutions, corporations, and private literacy organizations in Virginia to address adult illiteracy in the workplace and to provide family literacy training to teachers and parents. The VLF is governed by the founding Executive Director, Mark E. Emblidge, and a Board of Directors chaired by Jeannie Baliles.
Sustainability organizations are (1) organized groups of people that aim to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.
The IBON Foundation is a non-profit research, education and information-development institution with programs in research, education and advocacy based in the Philippines. It provides socioeconomic research and analysis on people's issues to various sectors. It aims to contribute to people's empowerment through education and advocacy support. The foundation is also engaged in international solidarity work.
The Center for Media Justice, established in 2008, is a national non-profit organization based in Oakland, California. The organization's mission is "to build a powerful movement for a more just and participatory media and digital world—with racial equity and human rights for all."
Communities Without Boundaries International (CWBI) is an international non-governmental tax exempt organization carrying out peacebuilding and sustainable development projects in the US and around the globe, and founded on the philosophy and principles of nonviolence as espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas K. Gandhi. Their mission is to foster peace through development and the empowerment of communities using the philosophy and principles of nonviolent social change. Its missions are carried out through research, education, and technical assistance in underprivileged, conflict, and post-trauma/conflict communities around the globe.
Collaborative partnerships are agreements and actions made by consenting organizations to share resources to accomplish a mutual goal. Collaborative partnerships rely on participation by at least two parties who agree to share resources, such as finances, knowledge, and people. Organizations in a collaborative partnership share common goals. The essence of collaborative partnership is for all parties to mutually benefit from working together.