Looking Back & Looking Forward

Posted Tue, 01/11/2011 - 10:11 by InKenzo

As we tip forward into a new year and #TSDIGS Digital Storytelling Event it's a great time to celebrate what's working in our virtual community, learn a few lessons and set intention for the coming year together. What were some of the highlights of our time together at NPC this past year?

1.Preferred Family Healthcare receives a grant for $865,000 for virtual addiction therapy services and PopSci features Coughran and Brena this month. Lesson learned: dream big and have metrics to back yourself up!

2.Virtual Haiti Relief teams raise thousands through virtual events in partnership with NPC and other charitable avatars. Lesson: build partnerships early, before disaster strikes, so you're ready to leap into action together.

3.TechSoup trainings, webinars and events draw thousands of nonprofit leaders to learn about new platforms, tools and opportunities to grow. Lesson: keep providing easy opportunities to learn new tools and the community grows in appreciation.

4.NPCGames, a special working group for nonprofits interested in developing games, grew to include dozens of specialists working across sectors to grow causebuilding options for play. Lesson: Nonprofit leaders can be gamers too and we need both mindsets to develop meaningful play experiences.

5.GreenTech initiatives take hold in many organizations, reducing energy and resource costs while encouraging use of cloud and virtual platforms as an alternative to travel. Lesson: promoting efficient virtual teamwork helps reduce operation cost for some nonprofits.

6.Stories of Impact machinima videos joined our YouTube page featuring some of the best NPC leaders in action. Lesson: Telling stories through interactive media helps our community grow outside of the virtual world.

7.After four years of @techsoup weekly Friday meetings in Second Life we maxed out our sim with 99 guests to hear Lindens talk about bringing teens and adults together in the new mixed grid. Lesson: never underestimate how many people will appear when the right guest shows up!

Looking forward, how can we take our best assets and build stronger virtual communities for nonprofits?

1.Integrating youth and adults in one virtual place will allow for many new educational and volunteer opportunities along with a potential infusion of young energy

2.ReactionGrid, OSGrid and various open sims are available at low cost to nonprofits, making it accessible for organizations to own their own servers or create larger simulation experiences

3.Building bridges between worlds, hypergrid tours and cross-sector partnerships will be even more important as we connect beyond Nonprofit Commons in Second Life

4.Educational experiences, museums and nonprofits that create immersion experiences in virtual space will find participation growing, especially as user content is featured in galleries and exhibition halls around the world

5.Embracing young, saavy programmers who are excited to help their favorite causes will be the tipping point for many organizations looking to grow and try new endeavors

6.Invite more gamechangers and respected leaders from various sectors to help us open new doors, dream big and make new connections across the grids

7.Playfulness and fun storytelling elements connect people over time and grow a sticky network of engaged leaders. Be intentional about designing play that offers various ways to plug in and random people will find you and get involved!

So on this 1/11/11 it is our hope as the avatars of Nonprofit Commons that you are taking time to do something new, build a bridge and be the best you can be. Never settle for the status quo when you can be extraordinary – every avatar at NPC embodies this in some way and together we create a community that is unique in its resilience, a pillar in the ever-shifting 3D web world. Being that pillar requires all of us to live out the commitments we've made to our people, to volunteerism within NPC and to continually reach out beyond ourselves and represent alteratives to the rigidness of our real world. Each of us has learned to craft our own experience, choose our own adventure and share some piece of that through photos, machinima, blogs and tweets. Keep sharing and remember that we create this experience every day together and we choose how to make the most of it!

Special thanks to the leaders at Nonprofit Commons for their hard work along with Rik Riel, Rhiannon Chatnoir and Pathfinder for their amazing blog writing looking ahead to 2011 in virtual engagement.

Comments

NPC Tenant PFH Featured in Popular Science

by Ronnie - 01/13/2011 - 18:35

"Therapist Brenda Bryan asks everyone in her anger-management group to teleport to a volcano," writes Lizzie Schiffman in an article published in the current issue of Popular Science. Brenda Bryan is NPC's own volunteer, Brena Benoir. The article continues: "Bryan isn’t your typical therapist. She’s a virtual-world therapist practicing at Preferred Family Healthcare Center in Kirksville, Missouri. So-called avatar therapy transplants standard counseling into virtual settings, in this case, private scenes custom-built using code from Second Life, the online multiplayer game. Avatar therapy has been gaining popularity and credibility recently, with several hundred patients now seeing virtual counselors."

Preferred Family Healthcare is a Midwest, United States-based nonprofit mental health provider that specializes in prevention and treatment of substance use disorders. Established in 1979, PFH has over 500 employees serving communities in Missouri and Texas from 35 locations. The organization's mission is to continually strive to be a dynamic, caring organization united to assist others in achieving their potential.

Dick Dillon (Coughran Mayo in Second Life), is a senior vice president at PFH and is responsible for PFH's involvement in NPC
(http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/160/22...). He joined Second Life in February of 2007.

"I was introduced to Second Life by my girlfriend, who is in the advertising business and had heard about it at a seminar she attended," said Dillon. "I was curious and found nonprofits were active in SL immediately after entering in-world. The rest is history."

The history Dillon mentions actually started with a pilot program that examined the efficacy of delivering services to clients from within Second Life. "We found some seed funding to start a pilot project to deliver outpatient counseling services in a virtual world," he explains. "A local healthcare foundation gave us a three-year grant for $300,000 and that allowed us to hire a counselor." PFH began serving clients in-world, and in late 2010, they were awarded a sizable grant to continue the work begun in the pilot program.

"We recently were informed that the federal government through the Department of Health and Human Services had selected a proposal that we made to deliver treatment services, to a targeted age group, transition age youth ages 19 - 25," says Dillon. "They're going to fund a grant proposal that we made for about $865,000."

It's no wonder they won the grant. The Popular Science article quotes some impressive statistics: "95 percent of those in Bryan’s virtual-world program have completed or are attending their sessions, versus only 37 percent of patients being treated face-to-face." Convenience and less social anxiety may be why PFH's results appear promising to the future of virtual world therapy.

Dillon tells Popular Science that PFH's virtual clients attend four times as many therapy sessions as people do in real life. “We find that people spend more time in session if they don’t have to spend time getting there,” he says. Virtual treatment, writes author Schiffman, removes some barriers to access for frequent travelers, those who live in rural areas, and those whose physical disabilities make it difficult to travel to therapy sessions.

"Beyond that, for clients in our target age groups, this is just how they are used to interacting with one another," Dillon tells NPC, "using technology of all kinds. In a virtual world, we are literally meeting them on their own turf. It's attractive and fun, and while they keep coming back we are able to work with them on important issues."

You can join Dick and other NPCers at Wharf Ratz Tuesday Night Extraordinary Dance Extravaganza, every Tuesday at 8 SL Time, http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/163/23...

You can visit the Preferred Family Healthcare offices on Nonprofit Commons at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aloft%20Nonprofit%20Commons/163/23...
To read the entire Popular Science article, go to
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-12/avatar-will-see-you-now

 

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