Every week, the Mozilla Learning Networks team–with staff located across the US, Canada, Brazil, London, and Berlin–gathers for an hour-long video conference to connect, plan, solve challenges, share resources and work together.
In a recent meeting, we shared updates on some of the work that has made us most proud over the past month or so. Consider this a behind-the-scenes look at how our team is supporting leadership development for the open Web!

• We welcomed 100 new Club Captains (for a current total now of 120) after working with Regional Coordinators to interview applicants to learn more about their needs and motivations. For an in depth update on the State of Mozilla Clubs and what’s left for 2015, click here.

• More than 70 members attended Hive NYC’s September meet-up to learn from a media literacy program in collaboration with Rikers Island and The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria, hosted at Parsons The New School For Design University Center. The focus of the program is on its overarching impact on students, law enforcement, parents and mental health practitioners.
• In 2014, Capital One approached Mozilla Hive NYC regarding support of their interest in funding youth and technology projects that benefit a “low-moderate income population.” Further conversations revealed that Capital One wished to make a one-time investment through the Community Reinvestment Act.
  • Our community program presentations with Capital One resulted 100k in grants to fund four Hive NYC projects!
• 80 participants engaged with us in a Mozilla Web Literacy Training at Brooklyn Public Library.
• Hive Chicago’s meet-ups have recently been re-engineered based on membership feedback. Now that people are active, they want to begin removing themselves from the equation so that they can better up-level, empower and showcase community leaders. You can learn more by watching their September meet-up.
• We collaborated with edSurge for this great article describing three Hive NYC projects that demonstrate the value of connecting informal educators with classroom teachers so that each inspires and challenges the other to invent creative learning opportunities.
• In the UK and London, we’ve been building relationships with new partners, encouraging them to use our space, drop in for coffee and discuss how we can continue to work together. CoderDojo is a great example of this where we stayed in touch, started to share workstreams and ideas, and now our programs and tools are being utilized by those connections.
• We have a new @Mozteach Twitter leader and are seeing increased engagement and activity on that channel. We’ve welcomed over 600 new followers and have seen engagement increase by over 100%! We love when community members share photos, ask questions, and engage in discussion with us on Twitter, so don’t be shy. Join us on Twitter!

• We are prototyping Web Lit Basics II activities on our forum, Discourse, and would love your feedback. There are currently 3 new Thimble activities available to remix and share: 3 Things I <3, Homework Excuse Generator, and My Six Word Summer.

• If you regularly follow Mozilla Foundation happenings, you know that we’re furthering our commitment to gigabit innovation in the U.S, with the help of a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Currently, we’ve developed the 1st three month plan for gigabit work, including plans for hiring and onboarding. We’re excited to continue sharing our plans and progress with you as this project continues to unfold.
• We have seen 50+ people curate Mozfest on Github and it has been amazing. With only a few weeks between us and Mozfest kick off, we are in high gear planning, finalizing, and triple checking every last detail of the event. We hope to see you there!
• Our team has created this easy to use template to form new activities for Mozilla Clubs. Our goal is to use markdown to write content, use issues to handle discussions, use wiki to handle extra documentation, use github pages system to distribute content, ultimately making the process for creating new Club activities more efficient.
• A new and improved X-ray Goggles homepage is coming and the designers are rolling on development for the launch. Stay tuned on the blog and Twitter for more details.

Have questions or comments about current projects or future plans? We’d love to hear from you on our forum.