Technology Access for All in MetroBoston by Peter Miller and Deborah P. Snow The metropolitan Boston area has one of the most extensive and far-reaching networks of community technology centers in the entire country. Indeed, the Boston area offers an international equity model of training and support as well as access for the information have-nots. In addition to the announced 13 new programs in the process of being established at Boston's Community Centers ("City Initiative Puts Youths On-line," Mark Brunelli, Boston Globe, July 24, 1997, p. B7)—one of Mayor Menino's initiatives in this arena—there are no less than 45 additional centers with community technology programs and public access throughout the area, with a special emphasis on serving those ordinarily disenfranchised from the benefits of emerging technology [see map]. Consider the following: * The YM and YWCAs in Dorchester and downtown Boston on Huntington Avenue and Clarendon Street and the Boys and Girls Club in Roxbury have exemplary programs. Y's and Boys and Girls Clubs do not have such programs as a matter of course. In addition, the Shelburne Computer Center in Roxbury, the Harbor Point/Walter Denney Youth Center in Dorchester, and Jobs for Youth all have computer programs especially for youth. * The Computer Clubhouse at the Boston Computer Museum has been matching inner city youth with students and faculty from MIT and elsewhere in an advanced program of technology access including robotics, multimedia composition, and web page design. The Harriet Tubman House/ United South End Settlements (USES) is well into its second decade of technology access. A Clubhouse program has also opened in USES in a second lab. As the location and nature of some of these programs suggest, technology access and support is not only for children. Many of the community centers also serve adults, families, and seniors. USES has videoconferencing capabilities, too. In the late 80's its lab was not only providing an adjunct for its after-school and kids programs, it was used for job training, providing open public access, and collaborating with Project Place in providing the center for a city-wide technology access and training program for the Greater Boston Adult Shelter Alliance, before a number of the shelters instituted their own programs. The widespread distribution of community technology centers throughout the area reflects a multi-racial, multi-ethnic outreach, too. And in many instances programs are clustered to provide neighborhoods with collaborative opportunities for multi-site access, training, and support. Consider: * In Chinatown alone, the Asian-American Resource Workshop, the Asian-American Civic Association (AACA), and Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (formerly the Quincy Community School) Adult ESL Program all have technology programs. * The Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts has just opened a major computer center in Dudley Square where there are also technology access program at the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club, the Dudley branch of the Boston Public Library, and Cruz Management's HUD Neighborhood Networks Community Center. La Alianza Hispana, the H.B. Cooper Community Center, Roxbury Presbyterian Church, and the Veterans Benefits Clearinghouse all recently participated in an organizational meeting for Dudley Area Technology Access (DATA) with outreach to the Mandela Computer Learning Center, the South End Technology Center at Tent City, WAITT House, and the Roxbury Family Branch of the YMCA, all of which have technology education and access programs in various states of development. Mel King, the chair of the MIT Community Fellows program for many years, among his other accomplishments, is a leading figure at the Tent City project, where TecsChange runs a major recycling program and provides equipment and technical assistance to Latino groups locally and to Central and South America. The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), through support by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Rebuilding Community Initiative, is in the midst of developing substantial technology resources. The Codman Square Health Center is developing a major technology program with a youth entrepreneur component to supplement its civic health project. * El Centro del Cardenal in the South End, the Haitian Multi-Service Center in Dorchester, the Boston Photo Collaborative in Jamaica Plain, the Notre Dame and Condon Community Centers in South Boston, the Kennedy Resource Center in Charlestown, and ROCA in Chelsea all have computer access facilities as complements to their on-going community programs. Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly and Jewish Vocational Services at Camelot Court in Brighton are among housing developments that have established lab facilities. Virtually Wired, a public access Internet center especially established for low-income people in downtown Boston, has received new life through a partnership with ABCD and is currently doing a series of programs on Boston Neighborhood Network's community cable access channel. Nor are these development restricted to the City of Boston proper. * The Somerville Community Computing Center (SCCC), located in the Somerville Community Service Center near Davis Square, is the main technology facility for the city's Council on Aging, Community Schools, Head Start, and Adult Education programs, and provided the lab for the Powderhouse elementary school next door until it donated a lab of equipment directly to the school. The SCCC has operated for a number of years with the support of Community Technology VISTA volunteers and has provided technology training for VISTAs across New England. Years ago Boston Computer Society volunteers were teaching animation on the center's Amiga computers and the videos were taken to Union Square at the other end of town where they were shown on Somerville Community Access Television. The SCCC has run collaborative projects with the public library, local housing projects and child care programs well as SCAT since its establishment in the late 80's. Short Stop Youth Shelter and the Boys and Girls Club in Somerville also have computer labs. * The Cambridge Public Library received an Apple Libraries of Tomorrow equipment and Internet grant to develop one of the earliest public access Internet library programs in the country. Cambridge Community Television (CCTV) in Central Square boasts a computer access center which specializes in, among other things, family literacy. CCTV's work complements that of the Community Learning Center on the other side of Central Square, and the nearby Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House has recently expanded its computer lab which has moved down from the 3rd floor into more spacious first floor quarters. The Cambridge Housing Authority is well along in opening the first of two public housing labs at Jefferson Park and Newtowne Court. * Malden Access Television, another community cable public, educational, and governmental (PEG) access center expanding and integrating converging technologies, has provided basic Internet training for teachers in the Malden School system as well as access and training at its main center. This year they've opened up a second computer center in conjunction with the Newland St. housing development in partnership with the City. * The Watertown Housing Authority has set up two computer learning centers, at Willow Park and Lexington Gardens. These examples reflect the growing awareness among public officials of the importance of community technology facilities. On the other hand, private sector involvement—and that of the large and prestigious educational institutions in the area—has been minimal. Support from the corporate technology Route 128 belt—as substantial as Silicon Valley or the corporate technology centers in Texas, North Carolina, Washington, and elsewhere—is more indirect than direct, with one major exception. The Lotus Development Corporation, headquartered in Cambridge, has been especially helpful in assisting these centers through grants of financial support and software for many years. When corporate philanthropy and community involvement is developed, we might expect community technology in MetroBoston to take another giant leap forward. And there are some good opportunities for this to happen. With the closing of the Boston Computer Society, the country's largest computer users group, staff members of the BCS public service and nonprofit assistance programs are now running neighborhood centers. Former BCS volunteers continue to be active in the area, largely through these neighborhood programs. Perhaps the recently-formed Boston Computer Foundation will be able to tap some of the previous BCS corporate and individual support for community technology efforts. In the meanwhile, ongoing collaborating resources include: * The Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet), a national project funded by the National Science Foundation to assist community organizations and nonprofits in the development of these programs, located here at Education Development Center in Newton, has more than 250 affiliated centers across the country, more than 40 of which are located in the metropolitan Boston area and included in the groups noted above. * A number of programs have been working for years to use telecommunications as a resource tool for adult literacy through the Literacy Telecommunications Collaborative. This group of 15 adult ed centers is the heart of a community-wide education and information service (CWEIS) involving WGBH, CTCNet, and the Boston Adult Literacy Resource Institute (check out http://www2.mbcweis.mbcweishome.html). MBCWEIS received its grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to expand its work last summer and can be expected to grow. * There are a myriad of other community technology resources to complement and expand these efforts including the East-West Foundation; the Nonprofit Computer Connection, one of many projects which specializes in offering more general technical assistance and training to area nonprofits; the Telecommunications Policy Roundtable-Northeast (TPR-NE) which is the local public interest telecommunications policy arm of a national effort; and the Center for Civic Networking, which specializes in community networking projects. In June of 1996, when Mayor Menino offered the welcome address to the national Community Technology Centers' Network conference held at Boston University, he endorsed a comprehensive plan to fund computers in the neighborhoods through community technology centers as well as in the classrooms and in libraries. The large number of vital centers throughout the region gives vivid testimony to the mayor's call for a broad-based institutional national movement of education and access. Community Technology Center Review, January 1998 Table of Contents