Kick it on your hoverboard and join PTP for our Back to the Future Celebration and Awards

Progressive Technology Project (PTP) is celebrating 17 years of helping to strengthen the social justice movement by supporting community organizing groups through transformative trainings, coaching, technical assistance, and technology. PTP continues to harness the best of what the future of technology and new media brings into the best practices of on-the-ground organizing.

Through the years, we have had the honor of working with creative and powerful social change-making individuals and organizations. We will be giving recognition and awards to some of these individuals and organizations who have been instrumental to the work of PTP and have amplified their community organizing work with the power of technology.

For our 17th anniversary celebration, we will be honoring the following individuals and organizations with our "Back to the Future" Awards:

Mark Sherman, Former Executive Director and Chief Innovations Officer, Progressive Technology Project

Mark has recently retired after being a member of the PTP team for thirteen years, starting as the Executive Director in 2002 and then as Chief Innovations Officer since 2012. We are honoring Mark for his direction and leadership as Executive Director and especially with his work on PowerBase support, which he handled with grace and good humor as he served close to one hundred organizations around the country. We will miss you Mark!

Community Voices Heard (CVH) & Sondra Youdelman, Executive Director

CVH is a membership organization of low-income people building power in New York City and State to improve the lives of their families and communities by securing social, economic, and racial justice for all. CVH has a long history of training their staff on using technology and data, especially building the practice for all staff to use their organizational database for their daily work. Their focus on using technology has ramped up their community organizing and mobilizing efforts to achieve victories on critical issues such as expanding Participatory Budgeting, where ordinary people in 26 City Council districts are included in the process to directly decide how public monies are spent; and re-envisioning public housing in NYC by being a key partner in influencing Mayor Bill de Blasio to restore $52.5 million back into the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) budget immediately after being elected and ultimately ending annual payments of $70 million from NYCHA to the New York Police Department.

Voices Of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL- New York) & Jennifer Flynn, Executive Director

VOCAL - New York is a statewide grassroots membership organization building power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war and mass incarceration, along with the organizations that serve them, to create healthy and just communities. VOCAL has become one of New York's most powerful organizations; passing six state laws in the last 3-years, winning half a dozen major city and state policy initiatives and most recently passing the country's most progressive "ban the box" bill in New York City. All the while they have helped anchor the leading housing, policing, and fair economy coalitions and supported  movement moments like Black Lives Matter. For an organization of only 4 full-time organizers, none of this would have been possible without the smart use of technology and data management, and a database (PowerBase) that gave them the tools to maximize their basebuilding and mobilizing efforts, develop strong leaders, and communicate their successes.

Join PTP to network with kick-ass social justice community organizers, allies, and friends to let's celebrate our collective work and the future of PTP as we build a future for social change together!

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