August 28, 2006 When I meet community radio activists these days, it’s exciting to see the leadership role of people from KBOO. For years, KBOO staff volunteers have been teaching others how to do great radio. Ayleen Crotty has been teaching fundraising workshops at the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) conferences and at KMUN, Astoria, for example.

This year, we jumped to a new level by playing host to the 2006 NFCB conference. We had ten staff and dozens of volunteers in attendance and workshop leaders including Ms. Crotty, John Severn, Kathleen Stephenson and Julie Sabatier. We set up a KBOO open house followed by a party at the Doug Fir (with KBOO’s DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid spinning disks and former Membership Coordinator Jana Daisy Ensign leading her belly dance troupe!). The Vice President of NFCB wrote: “So many conference goers remarked on how welcoming KBOO was, how great it was to have a Community Radio conference in a city with a strong Community Radio station, how much they enjoyed meeting/working/talking with KBOO people…I never expected the kind of help and the amount of help I got from everyone, and I am grateful for every bit of it.” The event was, in Ms. Berson’s words, “a smashing success,” and KBOO was front and center.

At the Grassroots Radio Conference in Madison this summer, workshops were taught by our Volunteer Coordinator, Ani Haines, and our evening News Director, Lisa Loving. Ms. Loving reports: “I went to GRC because I needed answers for our newsroom, but

I found the dozens of affiliates were turning to us for solutions because of our success with local news broadcasting and volunteer participation. We have 50 volunteers creating one-hour newscast. Nobody else does that,” and it makes us a leader in locally-produced programming. KBOO volunteer Eduardo Delanderos-Tierre anchored both the evening news and a live remote for host station WORT! Mr. Delanderos-Tierre was also networking on behalf of KPCN, a new Spanish-language radio station in Woodburn from PCUN (Treeplanters and Farmworkers United of the Northwest).

KBOO has provided volunteer assistance, training and more for the new station. An astounding array of KBOO folks traveled to Woodburn in August for the PCUN barnraising, and we broadcast live from the Woodburn site in May.

From Mr. Wiley G. Barnett, former board member and former Interim Station Manager: The Radio Barnraising by PCUN at Woodburn this past weekend was a very heartwarming, inspiring, and amazing experience: a radio station facility - from studio to broadcast tower - coming into being before ones very eyes! The intimate and complex and flawless collaboration between PCUN, PROMETHEUS, and a wide cast of volunteers from all over the place was indeed a wonder to be a part of!! I was there for the whole weekend and was pleased to see so many KBOOers involved. Several of them will do parts of this historical event on their radio programs. Hope you and all KBOOers can catch some of those broadcasts. Ms. Haines enjoyed, “the incredible mix of people from children to elder folks, folks who had radio experience and people new to radio,” and this let many people share their individual and collective skills.

Thanks to all of our volunteers who participated including three board members (Judy Fiestal, Peter Tobey and Cherie Blackfeather) and our Latino/Latina volunteers (Mr. Delanderos-Tierre, Milton Jesus Sanchez, Ed Orozco, Cristina Perry Gonzales, “Chiapas”, Vanessa Calderon, Carmen Martin-Stiles, Gloria Luz Sánchez Alvarado, Sevrin & Carlos Chavez).

For more info, visit: www.prometheusradio.org or check out KBOO’s own documentary on the barn raising from KBOO Reports. From a management perspective, I would observe that sending volunteers to attend, lead organize conferences and workshops has educated and energized our community to the point that dozens of volunteers—along with staff support—have made the trip to Woodburn and also hosted KPCN staff here in Portland. It’s heartening to see our investment of time and money grow into a commitment to “media for the people.”

Arthur