Centers

[Steve]

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=====================

Local Centers Try to Span 'Digital Divide'

Pamela Mendels
NY Times 7/24/99


NEWARK -- In a tidy building in an otherwise run-down section of
Newark, 18-year-old Andrew D. Bedward hunched intently over a laptop
this week, trying to figure out the finer points of a software
program for making slide-show-type presentations. 

He was happy with many features of a practice presentation he had
made, one with simple text, a few colorful graphics and a splash or
two of animation. He was not yet satisfied, however, with the
background color. 

"Too light," he declared, working away at the keyboard to adjust the
hues. 

For the summer, Bedward is a daily visitor to the Urban League of
Essex County's Family Technology Center, one of a growing number of
neighborhood centers that bring high technology to poor and isolated
areas where home computer ownership is a rarity. 

Such centers are seeking to solve a problem that has arisen as high
technology has become an essential tool for work, education and
other important arenas of modern life: assuring that those who cannot
afford computers can nonetheless master and have access to them. 

Support for the idea of such centers received a boost this month,
when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) announced that it would launch a new initiative, in
partnership with AT&T, to set up centers in 20 cities across the
United States. The group plans first to establish six pilot centers
in Seattle, New York, Baltimore, Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas, and
eventually add another 14, according to Sheila Douglas, an NAACP
spokeswoman. "Recent studies have indicated that people of color,
particularly African-Americans, are falling behind in terms of
general access and learning how to use the technology," she said.
"This project is a solution to address that problem." 

But the NAACP's plans are not the only sign of support for the idea.
This year, for example, the federal Education Department kicked off
a new program to distribute $10 million in grants to assist in the
creation or expansion of community technology centers. The
department has received about 750 applications for the money, and
plans to finance between 40 and 60, according to Norris E. Dickard,
director of the program. Grant recipients are to be announced in
mid-September. 

Advocates of the centers say they are necessary to help bridge what
policy-makers call the "digital divide," the disparity in access to
technology between whites and minorities. A study published by the
Commerce Department earlier this month found, for example, that
while 47 percent of white households own computers, only 23 percent
of black households and 25 percent of Hispanic households do. 

"It's important for this technology to be embedded in the life of
communities," said Gary Chapman, director of The 21st Century
Project at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the
University of Texas at Austin. "For the most part, people in affluent
communities have that technology access at home or in jobs where it
is common. Poor people don't have it in either." 

Not everyone whole-heartedly embraces the idea of community
technology centers. Steven J. Allen is a vice president of Progess &
Freedom Foundation in Washington, a research group focusing on the
digital revolution and favoring free market solutions to social
problems. He believes programs encouraging home computer ownership
are the wisest, and favors federal policy more pointedly aimed at
telecommunications industry deregulation, which he believes could
bring down the cost of Internet connections to make it more
affordable to the poor. "The ultimate goal should be that people
don't have to rely on community technology centers, that people will
have Internet access at home," he said. 

Just how many community technology centers there are so far in the
United States is difficult to say. The Community Technology Centers'
Network, an organization for the centers, has about 300 members. But
Stephen B. Ronan, network manager for the group, which is based in
Waltham, Mass., says there are many more. Some are stand-alone
centers, he said. Most are programs housed in churches, youth groups
and other community organizations. The centers vary widely, too, in
the type of programs they offer. 

For example, Plugged In, housed in three neighboring store-fronts,
serves as a kind of all-purpose computer hub for East Palo Alto,
Calif., a low-income enclave in what people usually think of as a
uniformly affluent area, Silicon Valley. 

The organization's Technology Access Center is home to 16 computer
terminals with Internet access and such machinery as printers and fax
machines, all available for little or no charge. About 150 people
visit the center weekly for things as diverse as resume writing, Web
research on car buying and print-outs of invitations to a child's
birthday party, said Magda A. Escobar, executive director of the
group. 

Open seven days a week, the center also trains teen-agers in Web
design, offers low-cost computer literacy classes and operates a
number of other programs. 

Unlike Plugged In, the Family Technology Center in Newark, focuses on
technology training for the workplace and school. 

One Internet-connected computer terminal is available for public use,
and the pre-school students at the site's small child care center all
spend about an hour or two a week at the computers getting their
first taste of technology through colorful software for the very
young. But the center's primary purpose is reflected in such
activities as its 16-week program to train the unemployed in how to
use word-processing and other software that could get them entry-level
office jobs. Another program trains people to work on computer help
desks. 

With 25 laptops, 31 personal computers connected to the Internet, an
interactive television classroom and other high-tech gadgets, the
center is part of a network of 65 centers operated in the United
States by National Urban League affiliates, through a combination of
corporate donations, federal grants and Urban League contributions. 

The League hopes to establish about 50 more by 2006 -- and upgrade the
technology in all of them to be able to receive a new
distance-learning curriculum in computer and job skills. 

The Urban League's interest in community technology training actually
goes back decades, long before the Internet. Its current projects are
the offspring of a technology center set up by the Urban League
affiliate in Los Angeles in 1968, when participants were trained in
such skills as data entry and maintenance of mainframe computers, said
B. Keith Fulton, director of technology programs and policy at the
National Urban League in New York. "The centers represent a gateway
to careers in the next millennium," he said. 

Andrew Bedward is one of about 60 teen-agers taking part in the
Family Technology Center's summer program to teach young people from
Newark and surrounding areas such things as how to assemble and
repair a personal computer, how to use various publishing software
programs and how to use video production equipment. 

Bedward, who plans to enter college in fall, wanted to take part to
learn computer skills that he believes will help him at the
university and later in the workplace. Bedward said he does not have
a computer at home and considers the keyboarding and basic
word-processing he learned at school insufficient. "I feel college
and life after college requires more than just word processing
know-how," he said. "I have to be educated in every aspect of
computer technology." 

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company 






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