Andy, I spoke with Kavita Singh over the weekend regarding the same issue. Based upon our experience in Houston, I believe there is both an opportunity and a responsibility for community technology centers to take the lead in number of ways. 1. CTCs should be established at every center serving the Evacuee Community 2. Best practices and uniform policies for data collection and survivor search should be implemented. 3. A planning guide should be developed for CTCs serving the needs of the evacuee community 4. Entrepreneurial solutions for training and job creation should be developed for implementation at leading CTCs near significant evacuee populations. 5. Implementation of these suggestions should placed on a fast track in order to address the short term critical needs of the evacuee community and achieve longer term goals that include job creation and acculturation of evacuees into new communities.
TFA is willing to share our lessons learned in order move such a plan forward as quickly as possible. There are several hundred thousand persons in shelters across the U.S. These persons will be our new neighbors and they make our hometowns theirs. May CTCs welcome them and lead the way to engage them and support them. Will www.techforall.org -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Carvin Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 6:05 PM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: [DDN] Making the Astrodome CTC the Rule, Not the Exception Hi everyone, It's been amazing watching Technology for All's impromptu Astrodome community technology center evolve over the last few days. I've been following it with keen interest at the blog they've set up: http://texasctcs.blogspot.com/ Will Reed and his team moved with extraordinary speed to get the CTC up and running. I'd be very interested in hearing if other organizations have started to set up similar CTCs at evacuation centers near them. For example, it turns out that Cape Cod's Otis Air National Guard Station, about 90 minutes from Boston, will play host to evacuees in the coming days, weeks and months. What would it take to get a CTC established there, as well as other refugee centers? Given the huge amount of hurricane-related information that's available online - particularly related to missing/found persons - it seems that we should demand that all official evacuation centers have some kind of CTC up and running there. I'm not looking for an academic discussion here; instead, I'd like to see how we can outline clear, actionable steps that can be taken to move this forward in a matter of days. We as DDN members have immense resources and skills among us - how can we go about mobilizing our collective abilities now? ac -- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://katrina05.blogspot.com Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.