Media & Policy Center: Sponsorship

The Media & Policy Center (www.mediapolicycenter.org) is a multiple award-winning media foundation specializing in the production of socially relevant projects in an entertaining and enlightening context. The Center was founded by Harry Wiland and Dale Bell, whose individual productions have won one Academy Award, five Emmys, one Peabody, two Christophers, two Cine Golden Eagles, and numerous other awards and nominations. The Media & Policy Center's primary goal is to inform, challenge, and ultimately engage a responsive citizenry and to encourage full and meaningful debate and participation across the political, social, and economic spectrum. We are working towards this end by using our media talents to create televised and coordinated multi-media projects that enlighten, educate and empower those members of our society who seek to change their lives and their communities.

Our productions include And Thou Shalt Honor, a PBS broadcast on caregiving and the eldercare crisis, and Edens Lost & Found, a four-episode PBS series that examined four American cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle — confronting the challenges of urban restoration through the creation of sustainable urban ecosystems. Our projects have reached a wide audience: And Thou Shalt Honor had an audience of 16 million viewers, garnered over 110 million media impressions, and spawned nine regionally broadcast town hall meetings with several more coming in 2008. Its companion book was published by Rodale Press and has sold over 25,000 copies.

As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we are actively seeking sponsorship and other forms of funding for these projects and for the work of the Center as a whole. We are developing sequels to these projects and new projects that, like those before them, seek to inform and stimulate thought, conversation, and public action on critical issues in health care, the environment, education, and public affairs. To be fully effective, these projects must be well-funded, well-researched, well-produced, and well-distributed so as to reach our intended targeted audience over years of activity. We have considerable experience in working with foundations and corporate sponsors, and know how to create a rich and mutually beneficial partnership with those sponsors. Many concrete benefits are available to our partners, including logo and sponsorship announcements in the programs, publications, web sites, and promotional materials, attendance at and participation in live program events, complementary or discounted copies of project materials, and personal collaboration and consulting with Center staff. We are also are happy to discuss other ways in which we might collaborate: establishing a funding relationship may be only the first in a series of steps that would advance the common interests that a program's sponsorship might represent.

We are especially interested in arranging sponsorship for these projects, now in development:

• America's Children: Best practices to improve the life and health of our children.
• Being Creative in Philadelphia: Artists and entrepreneurs work together to revitalize a great American city.
• Bitter Tears: Stories of the legacy and struggles of Native Americans, as told through Johnny Cash's music.
• America's Family Farmers: Celebrating the American family farmer as they revitalize the joy of what we eat.
• Edens Town Hall Meetings: Live events that extend the Edens vision to cities throughout the country.
• If I Were President: A multimedia contest and broadcast of young peoples' ideas about the presidency.
• Balancing Public Space with Public Health: Finding a livable balance between the natural and built environments.
• Transportation Envy: We cannot be truly free without access to safe, clean, and affordable rapid mass transportation.
• Which Way American Education?: What we teach our children will determine who we, as a society, are, and will become.
• Education For Social Action: Extending our media projects into educational curricula that produce social action.

We welcome further inquiries about the Center and our projects, and how we might work with interested organizations and individuals to identify, clarify, and advance issues of common interest. For more information, please contact Harry Wiland or Dale Bell via email, or call us at 310-828-2966.