use the equipment and produce their shows and from our channels originally public access just meant access to those cameras and lights and mikes on the channels but us media volved we redefine that this for me access to any tool communications or technology tool that helps a person in our community or population better their lives through telling stories or through getting access to things they need to participate in civic educational or economic arena i think the key term we can point to as far as the value of s p n and within st paul is in its the title of its namesake old neighborhood network it is a way to become involved in your neighborhood and with your neighbors without having to go over and knock on their door and insert yourself into their houses but i feel that they connect community showing all the amazing things that are happening here in st paul we sort of look at ourselves as the probably one of the most unique curators so far culture history and politics here in st paul so if there's a longstanding advanta or something that's that's deep within our tradition you can bet that community productions is going to be out there covering some portion of that the other thing the community productions does is really work with nonprofits and community groups and local governments who don't have the capacity or our resource to be able to tell their story or our poets and our spoken word performers who read at the blacked out cafe especially at the lower time reading champs and asking and films those ten times a year and normally i spoken word performer are well it would have maybe one hundred people in the audience would see their work but when they're seen on s p n hundreds of people see their work some kind of thousands of people see their work were non commercial platform that is really an electronic green space for anyone in the community to be able to say talk about their perspectives their history their culture their background their concerns it's rare that the public gets to be public very often these days my favorite thing about s p n and is the public access stay off the equipment is certainly adequate for our needs but it's the people at work here who are both very empathetic with what you're trying to accomplish and very professional in the way they conduct themselves that make it really an enjoyable process to come d s p and to show any community group  individual organization church can come in and and learn really how to make media and that can be from the basic level right i i want to go film the jazz fest that's happening in the park so you're going to learn how to use that camera and use that editor and go out and film that and put it on the air at the other end it can be more of a deep exploration a longer process so we have a program called docu which is a documentary mentorship program where folks come in for several weeks and they work on a specific project so they come in and propose a project so they they have to have something in mind they don't pay anything we actually give them a stipend and we mentor them through the process of learning how to tell a story so from the very basics of just you know you've got a story to tell here's a camera go to how can we really give you skills that will help you be a better storyteller learn technology and communications in a way  transferable to all kinds of other aspects of your life my name is lisa peterson the equivalent and i'm a cordon later with the community technology empowerment project which is in america our program in the state of minnesota there's a big problem right now in the united states and one of the things that happens is that we think that everybody has access to computers now we are ready you have your mobile phone you have your i pad there is there is kind of this myth that the digital divide no longer exists and that's not true we the see type america our members are working with people all the time who have never touched a computer and i think one of the most valuable things about c tab as a program is that we are based at a community organization and we're working with nonprofits and social service organizations who might not have the expertise in technology and we like it that way we want to be able to bring technology to places that are doing really amazing work already s p n as you department we connect with about two hundred fifty to three hundred fifty youth a year and that's either here at our facilities or out and about in the neighborhood network are are far and few between same always blessed to have some to have an organization like this as the technology landscape gets more and more complicated as we get more and more channels we get more and more ways to communicate there's really only one one person in our community that's going to help folks navigate that understand that and better their community in that s if you care about the work we do in your you're interested in supporting us a encourage you to go to aspen and then dot org and consider giving us a donation consider volunteering your time or if you have a local business that would like some exposure we'd love to give you some time on our channel to say thanks for supporting us