DAYTON — CET and ThinkTV PBS stations were recognized with the National Educational Telecommunications Association’s (NETA) Community Engagement Award for COVID-19 Community Engagement.

“I have the privilege of working with the most dedicated colleagues in education — locally and nationally — always committed to what is best for our community learners. It is an honor to receive this award on behalf of Public Media Connect,” said Kitty Lensman, CET and ThinkTV president and CEO.

Public Media Connect is the regional partnership of CET in Cincinnati and ThinkTV in Dayton that was formed in 2008. Comprised of three Community licensed public television stations (WPTD, WPTO and WCET) offering 13 channels, Public Media Connect continues to pursue a local distinctive educational, cultural, and informational mission in both communities. Public Media Connect, which also includes the Southern Ohio Instructional Technology Association, serves a regional population of more than 3.5 million people.

The award was announced during NETA’s national conference on Jan. 25, 2022. The NETA award recognized the content, outreach and impact of CET and ThinkTV’s three virtual summer camps.

Each summer camp had a unique local partner, PBS Kids content, story times, crafts, field trips, and more. The camps enabled families, caregivers, and teachers to leverage online content to help fight “summer slide,” especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The three camps included:

• “Imagine Your Story Reading and Adventure Camp” — This five-day camp featured camp counselors and local partners with field trips, activities and story time at the Dayton Metro Library.

• “Explore the Outdoors Nature Camp” — This six-day camp with hands-on exploration of nature featured educators from Dayton’s Five Rivers Metro Parks and science resources from PBS’s Nature Cat.

• “Be My Neighbor Day Camp” — This six-day camp was based on PBS KIDS’s Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and was focused on teaching kindness, diversity, peacefulness, and other SEL skills in partnership with the Dayton Peace Museum.

“During the isolating and uncertain times of the pandemic, families struggled as their homes became their entire worlds. ThinkTV quickly rose to the challenge, doing what we do best —we opened a ‘window’ of discovery that leveraged both local and national content, keeping kids inspired, engaged, motivated and learning during a very challenging time. Plus, if we were able to make them laugh or smile along the way, even better,” said Greg Schell, CET and ThinkTV’s corporate and business development manager, who coordinated the camp partnerships and led the production of much of the content.

Combined, these three camps had more than 897,000 post impressions and close to 100,000 video views. The success of these virtual camp series helped CET and ThinkTV develop a new model for education and community engagement, create Ohio-approved professional development workshops for educators, and offer training that allowed Head Start teachers to use the camps in their classrooms.

The station staff also led a camp at Camp H.O.P.E. in partnership with Dayton City Schools and Five Rivers Metro Parks and, because of its success, the camp will now be part of the organization’s after-school program. CET and ThinkTV also furnished 200 teachers’ kits through Crayons to Classrooms and created booklets for Dayton Children’s Hospital.

To explore these three summer camps – and to watch for new about future camp opportunities – visit www.thinktv.org/camp or www.CETconnect.org/camp.