North Portland Multimedia Training Center Wins Grants

Meyer Memorial Trust, Portland Development Commission, Multnomah County Cultural Coalition and the Black United Fund gave support through their 2014 grant programs to the North Portland Multimedia Training Center, an educational project of The Skanner Foundation.

PDC is providing nearly $20,000 to upgrade to ADA standards one of the existing downstairs bathrooms at the training center site on Killingsworth. The building’s design already has several built in advantages for people with disabilities with its wide doors and spacious hallways. Building owner and The Skanner Foundation President, Bernie Foster says this helps toward their commitment of being 100 percent ADA compliant for NPMTC trainees. Their next big challenge is to provide ADA access to the second floor of The Skanner Newsgroup building, where training occasionally occurs.  Part of the PDC project is to provide a design and estimate for second floor ADA access.

Meyer Memorial Trust, The Black United Fund, and Multnomah County Cultural Coalition provided a total of $14,000 in support to train HD camera production. Productions will include Vanport Oral History videos and PSA’s made by PPS students attending the Community Transitions Program through Portland Public Schools.  

Project Administrator, Naomi Pierce, understands the impact of these awards and sees them as a stabilizing factor for the training center as well as providing leverage for additional funding.  NPMTC trains individuals in the community at no charge to use professional state of the art HD video cameras as the method to record oral history interviews and other productions. In 2014 NPMTC will continue to collect Vanport stories to create a video archive for the community and the public at large and to provide opportunities to view the productions in venues across the city.  For more information, visit npmtc.org or call NPMTC at 503-285-5555 x 521.