Join us for the San Francisco Net Tuesday on September 9:
Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks.
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NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
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Innocence Project Learning Center
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Our new interactive learning center will raise awareness among young people about wrongful convictions and DNA testing by providing them with a set of web-based tools including Flash animations and videos to create mulitmedia classroom presentations.
Supporting organization:
The Innocence Project
URL:
http://www.innocenceproject.org
City:
New York
State/Region:
NY
Country:
USA
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
The Innocence Project works to overturn wrongful convictions using DNA testing and to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Every year, hundreds of middle school and high school students write to us asking us to help them put together a report on our work and on the criminal justice system in general. With support from NetSquared, we will develop an interactive section of our website that will give students the tools to create engaging multimedia presentations about wrongful convictions, DNA science and criminal justice and will also provide a launch pad for students to begin organizing in their community to build local awareness and support for reform.
With an interactive Learning Center we can achieve three goals:
1> Spark students’ interest in criminal justice and key reforms badly needed in the system.
2> Engage young people as grassroots members of our movement.
3> Provide students with multimedia presentation materials so they can help us spread the word about the problem of wrongful convictions.
The Flash animations we plan to create will include various levels of science-based lessons on DNA testing and forensic evidence, histories of wrongful convictions and profiles of specific cases (including a mix of video, animation and text), and interactive presentations of the various causes of wrongful convictions.
We don't currently have a substantive, interactive web component geared toward youth. Adding this feature will help us not just respond to the many requests, but also to reach out proactively to young people with the tools and information to encourage them to conduct presentations to their peers. Teachers will also use these tools to engage their students on the issue and provide them information in an interesting way.
Sustainability (financial) model:
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 and continues to thrive as a non-profit legal clinic. We currently have 35 employees working on litigation, policy reform, communications and fundraising. We have recently added a full-time position in communications department to handle the website and other online communications. This staff member will maintain and administer the new section of the website. We are applying for this award because we do not have the capacity in-house to develop this addition, but we are able to maintain it daily and oversee its growth and effectiveness.
Potential obstacles:
We need to build interactive Flash animations and other presentation materials that can be constantly updated, perhaps through a custom content management system. Our movement is changing everyday and the data and statistics we would provide to students changes just as rapidly.
When these tools are available on our website, we will need to reach out to young people to to use the tools, rather than relying on them to find us.
We need to be sure to provide information that remains accurate and helpful despite the custom uses available for students building presentations. As we add custom controls to our site, we want to make sure that these tools are used to communicate effective reform messages and aren’t changed drastically to include – using our organization’s name – a message with which we don’t agree.
Resource Needs:
With Netsquared support, we will hire a Flash / web development company to help us produce this interactive center.
Key Milestones:
Our web traffic has exploded since we launched a new site in February with vastly improved content and usability. With support from NetSquared, we will request bids immediately from Flash and web developers to create the new interactive Learning Center. We will launch the Learning Center in September 2007 for the new school year and spread the word about the new resource to educators and through the media throughout the school year. We will track statistics on usage of the site and we hope that thousands of students around the U.S. and worldwide will be using this resource by the 2008-2009 school year.
Project Summary:
The Innocence Project works to overturn wrongful convictions using DNA testing and to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Every year, hundreds of middle school and high school students write to us asking us to help them put together a report on our work and on the criminal justice system in general. With support from NetSquared, we will develop an interactive section of our website that will give students the tools to create engaging multimedia presentations about wrongful convictions, DNA science and criminal justice and will also provide a launch pad for students to begin organizing in their community to build local awareness and support for reform.
