Maetreum of Cybele Magna Mater Inc

The Maetreum of Cybele is dedicated to charitable works for the benefit of our community. In the past we did this through charitable housing of women in need. In the past several years we have been re-focusing on community building and outreach through our low power FM radio station, WLPP-LP. The FCC requires that low power FM radio stations be owned by non-profit corporations and be non commercial in nature.

WLPP-LP is a Pacifica Radio Network affiliate and in addition to approximately 35 hours a week of locally produced programs, much of which is made available to other Pacifica stations, we broadcast a wide variety of music and talk shows from other Pacifica stations. We maintain 24/7 broadcast coverage giving a progressive voice to an area that lacks that content for the most part. In addition we provide a community "bulletin board" through public service announcements available to other organizations in our listening area.

After hurricane Irene cut off our area from most services we also saw the need for a local source of information during emergencies because most commerical stations are not locally sourced. Our current goal is to acquire the ability to stay on the air during such emergencies with a backup generator system in addition to the wind and solar generation we currently have on a smaller scale. We would also like to upgrade our transmission tower and antennae to fill in the gaps in coverage locally due to geography.

We try to meet our goals through example in addition to our outreach. We don't just run a community radio station, we promote local gardening and raise our own chickens and have a small solar and wind generation capability. We share our resources with our community as a part of our religious mission. We hope to increase the volunteer base to maintain the radio station and raise funds through underwriting, local events and charitable donations from others towards our goals. Up to now we have been almost completely self funded and paid for the equipment and expenses incurred but we have about reached our limits in doing so. Every member of the Maetreum donates their time and resources, we have no paid employees so every penny we raise goes towards our community work.

We own our own property outright, own our means of broadcast outright and need help primarily in meeting ongoing expenses rather than needing provide expensive infrastructure support. Because we are all volunteers with no paid employees, every penny we raise can go toward improvement of our capabilities and those on going expenses.

The Maetreum of Cybele has a long history of achieving our goals. We fought a five year legal battle with the Town of Catskill for our recognition as a legitimate religious organization to the highest court in New York State and thereby setting a legal precedence that now covers every minority religious group in our state. While during this, we also provided emergency housing for about forty women and children in need, all funded by our priestesses for the most part.

We did all this with limited resources on a low budget basis. We applied for and were granted our low power (100 watts) FM radio license and managed to hostesses a national grassroots radio conference when we had only been on the air a couple of months. We have been providing other Pacifica stations (mostly non-commercial like us) an average of six hours a week of original radio shows covering everything from music to organic gardening and local politics.

Due to our unique location, our broadcast signal covers a much larger area than is normal for a low powered station and we can stay within our license even if we increase our broadcast tower height to twice it's current hight. We need to set up an emergency power generator to keep us on the air during local emergencies, we need to have a backup transmitter for emergencies We have done much with limited resources but we now need some help getting to the next stage.