Hi. I work at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society in Youngstown, Ohio.
For the last three years, I have been active in a new collaborative
organization known as the Mahoning Cultural Collaborative (MCC.) This
organization came together for the same reasons as you mentioned, but also
to reach a greater number of teachers and students in the area. We started
an annual summer program two years ago, and while it was not very successful
the first year, it saw some growth last year. We call it the Summer Passport
Program. People who participate in this contest must visit six sites during
the summer (museums, park district, library, and a planetarium.) When they
visit one of the sites, they pick up a passport brochure and take it to the
other sites with them. After they have visited each site, they receive a
"stamp" on their passport brochure. When they complete their brochure, they
receive a small gift and are then entered into a grand prize drawing for a
large basket of gift items donated from each site and area businesses. The
first year about 20 people finished. LAst year it was around 50, and this
year we received funding to print 25,300 brochures for children in grades
k-8 in the city and county school systems. We are expecting great success.
While we will run it also for the general public, the brochures are color
coded so we will know how many children completed the program. If it is
popular, we hope to do it again next year but work with city busing to bring
even more kids in. I also wanted to tell you that this program, while
challenging, has interested tourists. During our first year we had a family
from California and another from the East Coast finish. MCC is also working
on a collaborative teacher in-service day to make teachers aware of our
programs at each site, a website, and a general brochure about the cultural
district (with a map) for tourists and the local community. For right now,
this is about all we can handle. We meet once a month and it is sometimes
hard to keep everyone interested, but if you pick a project to work on
people seem to want to stay involved. I hope this helped. If you are
interested in seeing a Passport Program, let me know and I will mail one to
you.

Elizabeth Nohra
Assistant Director
Mahoning Valley Historical Society

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).