As a complement to the junior counselor program, teens soon requested a “mentoring plus” program that would offer meaningful employment, life-skills training, leadership development, and college/career preparation during the school year, and so the term-time Leaders! program was established.

Today, summer Leaders! has grown from 40 to 100 teens, and term-time Leaders! from six to 25, all of whom receive one-on-one mentoring, including MCAS/SAT preparation and college/career advising; group mentoring built around a leadership development and social justice curriculum; and employer mentoring (35 hours/week summer and four hours/week term) performing community service in their own neighborhoods.

Since 2002 the summer Leaders, as part of their training, have organized and run PBHA’s Midsummer Celebration, a major citywide event that brings campers, parents, and staff from all 11 camps together with friends, community members, and civic leaders. Thanks to their efforts, the Midsummer Celebration has grown from 100 to 1,000 attendees and now includes a carnival, talent show, basketball tournament, Community Builder Award presentation, and a Community Action Project. In 2009, PBHA and the junior counselors received official recognition from the City of Boston when the City Council passed a resolution commending them for their consistent and dedicated service to the community. In fact, the City of Boston named July 29th “Phillips Brooks House Association Day” in honor of the ten-year anniversary of the Midsummer Celebration.

This summer, the Junior Counselors in the Community Action Project planning group were charged with finding how an event like the Midsummer Celebration, which brings so many people from all over Boston together, could be used to generate change within their community. They went through the process of problem identification, identifying several consistent problems in their communities: disparities within the school system (teachers, electives, and policing in schools), MBTA fare hikes, cuts to youth programs, jobs, and a lack of youth workers, and a lack of information about the Mayorial race.

The Junior Counselors then chose to use the Midsummer Celebration as an avenue to share their concerns with their community members and youth and to let their voice be heard. Due to some technical difficulties, the documentary was never shown at Midsummer, but it was shown at the Summer Urban Program Blowout Celebration, is now up on youtube, a copy has been given to the Harvard Institute of Politics, as requested, and officials from the City of Boston have asked to work with the CAP JCs on a consistent basis and hear their concerns about the budget. Leaders! presented a case for their concerns, and now you can see their documentary as well!

Downloading Instructions:
1. In your web browser (firefox, safari, explorer, etc) type in ftp://140.247.72.225.  This should take you to the “PBHA New Fileserver.”
2. Login.  Username and password are “pbha”
3. Click on programs, and then find your program.
4. From there, you should be able to download old documents.  This should work fine on a Mac or a PC.

Uploading Instructions:
1. On a PC, you should be able to drag and drop documents from “My Computer” into the folder that you want them.
2. On a Mac, you will need to download a program to help you do this.  I downloaded “ClassicFTP” (google it to find it) and it works well.  Fetch and some other programs will work to.  In those programs, you should type in the fileserver address, and be able to transfer files.

Creating a New Folder:
1. You generally will not be able to create a new folder from your home computer.  So, go to the PBHA computer lab.
2. Open SecureFX, click Connect, and click PBHA New Fileserver.
3. There, open Programs, then your program’s folder.
4. Here, you should be able to have access to change everything, including to create new folders.

A website helps to add legitimacy and increases the visibility of your program. This, in turn, is important for recruiting volunteers, researching and applying for grants, and attracting community resources. Websites can be used to provide information for multiple constituencies – Harvard, volunteers, potential volunteers, clients, potential clients, community members, foundations, corporate sponsors, etc. You should explore these constituencies to better understand how you want your website to work for your program.

Program Infrastructure: Does your program have the right resources to manage a website effectively?

• An account with HCS – go to http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/ to request for one
• A system to pass down the login information 
• A technology coordinator – either a separate position or a formal part of the director job description 
• Technology coordinator’s guide – you can get one from the PBHA fellow and modify it according to your program’s needs. 

Visioning: What do you want it to look like? What do you want it to do? 

• Program mission statement – your program needs to have a written program statement. Your website (all of your program’s operations) should reflect this statement. 
• Program Logo – a logo adds a unified look to your website
• Layout draft – a couple sketches of what you want every page to look like
• Color chart – swatches / hex numbers of the main colors for your website
• Site map – chart of the main pages and their content

Software: Do you have what you need?

• All required software can be downloaded from http://downloads.fas.harvard.edu
• For PCs: Secure FX (or another file transfer client)
• For PCs: Secure CRT (or another SSH Secure Telnet application)
• For Macs: Fugu (or another file transfer client)
• For Macs: Terminal Script (or another SSH Secure Telnet application)
• Dreamweaver + Key server (optional, for advanced editing)