You Are Listening to Radio KVSA Texas!

Hi blog readers! This is April Sullivan here to tell you about our summer fun in Radioland. I have personally been apprenticing on the KOOP 91.7 FM Radio shows Austin Artists and Reflections of Community Outreach on Mondays from 1-2 pm each week. By the end of July I will have taken my test to become a Certified Programmer for KOOP Community Radio Station. I am very excited!

Last month from June 13-24 I used my newly learned skills to teach a Radio Internship to 12 young interns. With lots of help from Eric and volunteers, we worked with our group of interns on topics such as FCC regulations, planning a music show, recording a newscast, writing a PSA and a podcast, and other skills of a radio DJ.

Interns Rachel and Max edit their PSA text with volunteer Zahira.

Intern Thad recording his newscast with volunteer John

One great thing about Austin is that we have lots of friendly community radio stations in this town. We took field trips to KOOP, a volunteer-run community station and KVRX, the UT student-run station. We saw DJs in action, rummaged through walls full of music CDs, and enjoyed a day out using public transportation. Did you know that KOOP and KVRX share the same FM frequency at 91.7 FM? So you can listen to unique programming 24 hours a day on the radio or online at www.koop.org or www.kvrx.org.

Intern Pearl at KVRX Studios

KOOP Executive Director Kim McCarson with Intern Rachel

And here is a little secret… you may see artwork by one of our interns on the next KOOP t-shirt. I don’t want to give anything away yet, but once a final design is announced, you know I will be showing it off. We are always proud of the work our interns do to impact the local community.

After a fun-filled two weeks where our 12 interns put in 40 hours of work learning about and creating radio, we had a final showcase where we played sound recordings of their newscasts, podcasts, and music shows. You can hear our newscast on the VSA Texas SoundCloud page here. As with all of our Side by Side Internships focused on providing techniques in creative industries for transitioning youth with disabilities, we know our interns have learned new skills they will take with them and apply in any career path they choose.

So what is our next Side by Side Internship opportunity? We have a new program called Giving Voice and the application is out now with a deadline of July 22nd. We are looking for 16-22 year olds with disabilities interested in being matched up with a graphic designer for a one-on-one poster design project. See details at http://www.vsatx.org/sidebyside/index.html.