 Hello! Hello! We are Michael Hill Jr. and Ita Menno. We're looking forward to working with you to deepen the impact at CCTV, Center for Media and Democracy. Thank you for accepting the invitation to engage in CCTV's reflective and transformation process. Much of your contribution to this effort will be in the organizational transformation at a time when performative change is no longer sufficient and a deep desire for authentic accountability has to be more than just a promise. We are looking for your support as we gather together groups of small groups of people to deepen our analysis of this organization's history, current culture with a hope to understand the direction and the culture of the future. We want to actualize and integrate social justice that's in the heart of a lot of users and into the principles of CCTV's work. This is our introduction to the work we're hoping to complete this winter, as well as a little more on who we are as facilitators and coordinators of this work. When you're done after watching this video we're hoping that you review and complete an attached waiver with other materials that outlines the content of what will and will not be shared with others from our 101's and our small group interviews. We want to share with you very explicitly and in transparency we won't be disclosing anyone's names or any descriptive information from participants. So the conversations we have will be confidential. We will disclose messages themes and stories we cultivate from our 101's and our small groups of participants to create suggestions, strategic guidance points and overall illustrations of the current climate of CCTV. Thanks, Mike. We're also going to be attaching a doodle poll in one of the attachments that we want to ask you to use to sign up for a small group session that you can join with either Mike or myself. Just indicate which days work. Pick two or three but we're only asking you to come to one session. If none of the dates work for you, email me and let me know so that an additional date can be arranged. We know that there are many ways that you could be spending time, energy and you're thinking, so we're really grateful that you're going to be spending it with us as we build CCTV into the future. Thanks, Eda. You can email either one of us if you need to reschedule. So we have some questions where we're going to ask ourselves but we're going to be able to tell you a little bit about ourselves and some other aspects about the project. So I'll start with who I am. My name is Michael Jr. I use he, him, his pronouns. I have been in Vermont for 18 years now. Some folks may recognize me or know who I am. I'm proud and very fortunate to say that I am the founder and sole proprietor of EJH Futures LLC who is co-collaborating on this project with CQ strategies, Eda Meadow. I'm also very proud and fortunate to say that I've been involved in the community for multiple years in different ways, restorative practice ways, youth and young adult empowerment ways, community engagement and empowerment ways. So I'm looking for it to doing this project and assisting CCTV and its staff members and its community members that engage with the entity overall. Awesome. Thanks, Mike. My name is Eda. I use the they series of pronouns a little bit about me. I like to grow things inside and outside and I like to work on projects but I'm a 70% project completer. So there's a lot of almost done projects all around the house. I have children who are still in this community and an amazing partner and we do a lot of stuff and you've probably seen us, many of you have seen us in and around the community. You know, the last time I was in here I was doing a presentation with the mayor about the impact of lead paint in rental housing. It's very exciting to be here again to do something that I also care, something else that I care passionately about. So, Mike, let me ask you a question. PSA's public service announcements are foundational forms of communicating information knowledge and engaging with the community. Can you share a time that you were able to participate in a PSA that benefited the community? Well, thank you Eda to read that question. As Eda just actually talked about they did a PSA with the mayor about lead paint. The last time I did a PSA was actually in the space as well and it was around doing community engagement and healing work around combating the increase of vaping for our youth and young adults. So, I remember doing that as a PSA I want to say almost seven years ago baby. So, and it's still it's always a novel experience, a humbling experience to be in front of the camera. Let me ask you a question Eda. How do you wish information was communicated, conveyed or offered? Oh, that's a good question. I so information like news but also more than news like just kind of any information. I really like to consume information in short bursts. I don't really have a desire or an attention span for long videos so I like these like short bits that can link me to a longer bit of information if I wanted to dive in there but also I don't like to watch long videos but I also will read long articles so I like short videos short sound bites but I'm willing to kind of dig into to long form writing for information so those are my preferred ways but but my favorite way to receive information is I don't want to say gossip but definitely but definitely like this one-on-one conversation and in the community through dialogue and discourse you know with a little bit of gossip. Yeah. Well I do think this question is important so I'm going to ask this question will participants of the project be compensated? Yes, they absolutely will. Folks who aren't employed directly by CCTV will make sure that folks get compensated for their participation in these focus groups. Yeah, we really respect and consider your time precious so we want to make sure that you're being compensated for it. And you're thinking? Yes. Thank you, great question. Let's talk a little bit about how this project will work. Okay, great. I think the first important piece is as you see this video and really take it for what it is. It is an invitation and an introduction. We are pacing ourselves to be organic and developing trust and cultivating opportunity for the voices that we need to hear to get the bigger picture to feel comfortable coming to the table to do this work and so that's one component of this project where the invitation is there so if you don't want to engage in this project or the process of this project you don't have to and even when choosing to engage with this project you are going to sign a waiver you are going to choose a time that's more comfortable for you and choose which one of us you would like to engage with so there will be a component for one-on-one conversations and then there will be a component for small group conversations and during those conversations we will take notes and gather themes and aspects that might come up in the one-on-one and the small group conversations and then compile that information as qualitative data and then we are going to use that data that we gather from these one-on-ones and small groups and create a survey kind of a climate study for the users and patrons of CCTV and send it a little bit more broadly so that we can gather even more information from that and then we are going to use the results of that survey to create a list of recommendations and reflections reflections and recommendations on how work has been done how we say work has been done here and how the work does or doesn't fit up with how we say we want it to go if that makes sense Great, thank you Yeah, of course, teamwork makes a dream work So the last question I have is who will this project benefit I think I don't like speaking for other people majority of the time though generally but I would I feel comfortable speaking for Eda in this answer this project will benefit everyone who is involved and engaged on a community level and as an employee or employer at CCTV level as well The center, CCTV, the center for community and democracy is a community is a strong community partner in engagement and democracy and has been as long as I have been working in this community so almost 20 years now and we want we wanted to continue to be one of the cornerstones and in order for it to do that we need to be able to have free discourse and grapple publicly with these questions of First Amendment and inclusion and I think that that's a really important thing particularly in winter, fall of 2023 I think that we're seeing all around the world this conversation of First Amendment rights and inclusion are coming to a loggerhead and I think that we're in a position right now and the center for media and democracy is in a position to really want to engage with the community in that conversation and I think this is that opportunity so if folks want to participate in that conversation with us again please fill out the links that we're receiving along with this video sign up for one of the 90 minute small group sessions and if that doesn't fit your schedule email Mike or I and we'll find some other time to kind of sit with you and I'm so sorry my phone is going off that was the weird noise that you hear it sounds like a peanut character Charlie Brown that's who I'm referring to alright thank you I think that's it yeah thanks everyone we look forward to meeting with you and talking to you