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Albany Guardian Society

Albany Guardian Society was established on January 1, 1852 to provide temporary shelter to homeless and friendless women and children. Around 1870, the mission changed as it began to serve women who required residential care in their later years. By the middle of the 20th century, it had evolved into a 44-bed licensed adult home. In 1986, the IRS reaffirmed Albany Guardian Society's status as a not-for-profit, private operating foundation.

The Albany Guardian Society Home was located at 553 Clinton Avenue in Albany, New York, and operated continuously from 1870 until it closed in the year 2000. Over its 130-year life cycle, many improvements had been made; however, it was no longer economically or structurally feasible to modify the building to the extent necessary to continue serving a frail elderly population. The Home closed in October, 2000.

Deciding to close the Home, the Board of Directors immediately embarked on a strategic planning process that would establish the future direction for Albany Guardian Society. While its history included the direct provision of residential care, the most consistent theme throughout the organization's 150 years has been service to the elderly. The Albany Guardian Society has reestablished its mission and its future will continue to be focused on the needs of older citizens, seeking to improve their quality of life. Albany Guardian Society will promote the exchange of information to educate and enlighten those who share our interest in creating a better life for seniors.

WMHT Educational Telecommunications

WMHT Educational Telecommunications, located in the Capital Region of New York State, was chartered by the New York State Department of Education in 1953 to produce and broadcast educational programming on non-commercial television and radio. WMHT operates one non-commercial public television station and two non-commercial public radio stations. WMHT is a member of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), American Public Television (APT), National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA), National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Radio International (PRI).

The program schedule on WMHT includes a mix of non-commercial programming for children, especially pre-schoolers, and for adults, including how-to, performing arts, sciences, nature, public affairs, history, cultural, and entertainment programs. WMHT maintains an active television production schedule, including how-to programming for a wide audience of interests, community and public affairs programming, and entertainment programming. WMHT produces programs for local and statewide broadcast and regularly contributes programming to the national public television schedule.

WMHT's educational services include Ready to Learn, a program of in-person workshops to teachparents, teachers, home schools, and daycare providers how they can use WMHT's preschool educational television programming to enhance learning and school readiness. New for the 2002-03 school year is an instructional video-on-demand library of over 1500 instructional titles in all K-12 curriculum areas, made possible by a partnershipbetween New York's public television stations and unitedstreaming , a subsidiary of United Learning Corporation. Use of this Internet-based library is free of charge, and access privileges are provided to teachers and parents by request (itv@wmht.org). WMHT's instructional television broadcast schedule for in-classroom use is developed and guided by teachers and school administrators from throughout the broadcast coverage area who have volunteered to serve on the WMHT Learning Services Advisory Committee.

For information on all of WMHT's programs and activities, visit WMHT Online at http://www.wmht.org.

The year 2003 will see the introduction of digital broadcasting in the Capital region of New York when WMHT begins to broadcast a digital service to its viewers while at the same time maintaining the existing analog service.