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Ed Morrison · What if Cleveland took the lead?
November 12th, 2008
Tap Internet to More Effectively Fight Poverty in the U.S. Says Research
Roadmap available here: Internet Innovation.org
Infrastructure available here: One Community
Expert guides available here: Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development and One Community
Data Tools available here: CANDO
Funding available here: Cleveland Foundation, Advance Northeast Ohio and here.
Leadership available here: Cleveland Leadership Center
Last 5 posts by Ed Morrison
- Signing off - February 3rd, 2012
- "The current global development model is unsustainable" - February 1st, 2012
- Market opportunities for developing Chicago's green economy - January 29th, 2012
- Plain Dealer flubs its explanation for firing Tony Grossi - January 27th, 2012
- Linking and leveraging university assets to strengthen regional economies - January 27th, 2012
November 12th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Who’s convening this conversation?
November 12th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Got me.
But my guess is that if someone (with “civic credibility”) took the lead to convene, a lot of resources could be linked, leveraged and aligned.
It’s a big opportunity staring Cleveland in the face.
November 13th, 2008 at 1:21 am
I tied to submit a reply earlier today but it disappeared somehow.
First, the “study” reported in Ed’s top link and direct-linked under that isn’t really a study at all, it’s just a broad review (mostly unfootnoted) of some ideas that are pretty commonplace among folks I work with.
Second, strikingly absent from the list above are any of the dozens of Cleveland community organizations who’ve been applying Internet tools and access or teaching Internet skills to empower poor citizens, on a daily basis, for many years. Like, e.g., our community technology centers.
If you’re looking for local “leaders” in the Internet-solving-poverty space, one reasonable place to start is the people who’ve actually buckled down and gone to work in the field.
Yes, it’s true we’ve been frustratingly short on the kind of “civic credibility” that translates into heavy, consistent investment.
But I think that problem is finally getting addressed too. Low-income community employment and education gaps are very much on the agenda of the Knight Center of Digital Excellence, which is hq’d in Akron and driven programmatically by One Community, and currently has “connected community” initiatives in development in inner-city Detroit and Miami among other places. (I’ve been helping with the effort in Detroit as well as here.) In those Knight Center projects as well in Cleveland, I think we’re finally seeing some real synergy between the traditional grassroots community technology approach and One Community’s institutional network-building approach.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Bill:
Thanks for the post and the additional information.
Still unanswered: Why is this not a citywide priority for Cleveland and the County?
Why does Cleveland lack “the kind of ‘civic credibility’ that translates into heavy, consistent investment”?
Who provides “civic credibility”?
How do we scale these community-based initiatives?