LEWISTON – Local cable access television could devote an hour each week to delivering community messages in Somali.

An advisory committee for Great Falls TV is helping local Somalis create slides providing information on the community access channel in Lewiston, Auburn and Lisbon. That’s channel 11 on Time-Warner and Channel 2 on Oxford Networks.

Phil Nadeau, deputy city administrator in Lewiston, said it could be a good way to get information out to Somalis.

“For example, it could be a good way to tell people about the winter parking bans,” Nadeau said. “It would be nice for them to know what the requirements are, where they can and cannot park, and how that changes if a snow emergency is declared.”

Great Falls TV runs a community bulletin board on that channel. Slides are available to any nonprofit group. Groups may prepare their own slides on Microsoft PowerPoint or have Great Falls staff create them.

General Manager Philip Larlee said his staff has a problem typing slides in Somali, since none of them speak the language.

“So we’ve a need someone from the community who will be responsible for creating the slide, and we also need to verify what they say independently,” Larlee said.

The city and GFTV formed a planning committee to find someone willing to do the work. That group was scheduled to meet Saturday at the B-Street Community Center. Empower Lewiston has agreed to provide a computer for the work.

“It may involve Somalis in the beginning, but we don’t imagine that’s how it will stay,” Nadeau said. “There are other non-English speaking groups that we think will want to be involved.”

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