She learned English from Sesame Street. Now in her adopted country Yuyi Morales writes books for kids. The My Source spot featuring her story, produced by KVIE in Sacramento, Calif., is one of the 44 real-life testimonials honored by CPB as part of the public-awareness initiative
CPB gets award for ‘My Source’and gives out 44 to stations
CPB’s My Source public awareness initiative this month won a 2009 PRWeek Award, considered by PR insiders as the Oscars of the industry.
The campaign received an Honorable Mention in the awards ceremony March 5 in New York City. Judges of the PRWeek competition — public relations and communications professionals—said My Source “put life and energy into a tough market” and praised its “solid strategy and execution.”
Two days later CPB gave out its own awards to 44 stations, the My Source Community Impact Awards for Education. Those awards were presented at a summit meeting in Washington of pubcasting station execs with the Council of Chief State School Officers — the state school superintendents.
Since 2007, more than 200 public television and radio stations have participated in My Source and have submitted 1,400 spots for CPB’s online campaign archive at MySourceFor.org.
Using CPB’s theme and templates, stations interview viewers, listeners and others about what public broadcasting does for them personally.
One of the 44 winning station spots, for Sacramento’s KVIE, for example, features Yuyi Morales (photo above), a winsome young Mexican-American woman who moved to California years ago with her then-fiancee and their two-month-old son. Her mother-in-law introduced her to Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow, from which they gradually learned a lot of English. Morales is now an author and illustrator of childen’s books including Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book and Little Night.
Other winning spots feature girls and their teachers raving about the two-week, hands-on science camp offered by WFSU in Tallahassee, Fla., and teachers report that students have used Kentucky Educational Television’s EncycloMedia online learning resource 2.3 million times since 2005 and have improved their art scores.
Pat Harrison, CPB president, remembers the spot about a woman in chemotherapy who says listening to the life evident in public radio gives her hope.
Harrison told Current she saw a need for such a campaign when she started the job in June 2005 and realized that many Americans didn’t know the range of services that public broadcasters provide.
That had to be done, Harrison said, “in a way that wasn’t managed or old or artificial. It had to be extremely real, and come from the voices of the community.”
CPB worked with the PR firm Powell and Tate to develop My Source.
CPB has budgeted about $2 million this year for the ongoing initiative, said Louise Filkins, CPB spokeswoman. About half of that goes directly to stations as grants.
CPB’s awards ceremony March 7 also honored the late Jim Henson and the Jim Henson Co., giving them the 2009 Fred Rogers Award. CPB created the award in 2001 to honor an individual or organization that has contributed to excellence in children’s educational media. Lisa Henson, co-CEO of the Jim Henson Co., accepted the award on her father’s behalf.
Vermont Public Television is "my source for local connections," says teacher Jean Berthiaume of Harwood Union High School in Duxbury, Vt., one of the station-produced identity spots recognized in CPB's My Source awards. (Image provided by CPB.)
Web page posted March 17, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
