Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Project gets low-income residents online

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 16:19:04 -0500

Project gets low-income residents online

 By THEO EMERY
 Associated Press

 BOSTON &mdash; The technician sat by the apartment window with a laptop on his knees,
 configuring the computer to pick up the Internet signal from a rooftop antenna a half a
block away.

 "How's the signal?" apartment resident Nakia Keizer asked from a sofa.

 "Not bad," technician Kevin Bowen replied.

 Not bad at all, considering this wireless "hotspot" was intended not for cafe-hoppers and
Internet
 surfers with money to burn but for urban poor who only a few years before had been
fighting roof
 leaks and overflowing sewers.

 Camfield Estates, a rebuilt 102-unit public housing development, has trimmed bushes and
groomed
 grounds. What also sets it apart from other low-income complexes lies hidden behind its
walls, atop
 its roof and in the airwaves.

 For the past two years, Camfield has been the site of a project aiming to span the
"digital divide"
 between impoverished Americans and those with easy access to technology.

 Called the Creating Community Connections Project, it has given residents free computers
to connect
 to the Internet originally through high-speed cables wired into every home.

 Residents gather at a community computer room to take free classes on everything from how
to plug
 in a mouse to setting up Web sites.

 The project, mostly paid for with a $200,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation and
supported by
 such companies as Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft as well as public and nonprofit entities,
is now
 taking another step.

 Now that Camfield's Internet provider has ended its two-year commitment to offer
discounted
 cable-modem access, the project's organizers will soon give residents the option of
switching to a
 wireless connection.

 The high-speed WiFi system transmits and receives data from four barely visible antennas
atop the
 development's main building.

 Residents can obtain wireless cards for their desktops or laptops. The cards, which can
cost up to
 $100 retail, will be given away to the elderly and sold for $60 to others.

 After that, residents will be able to log on &mdash; for free &mdash; from anywhere
within Camfield.

 While wireless zones are popping up around the country in airports, coffee shops and
universities,
 technology experts say it's unusual for such a network to explicitly serve the poor.

 "It's something that's going to be replicated elsewhere, but this is, I think, the first
example of a project
 like this emerging out of the community, rather than being required by a grant," said
Anthony
 Townsend, a New York University professor and a founder of NYCwireless, an interest
group.

 Massachusetts Institute of Technology doctorate students Richard O'Bryant and Randall
Pinkett
 asked the Camfield tenants if they wanted to be involved in the project. The son of a
well-known
 school committee president in Boston, O'Bryant was motivated by a desire to provide poor
 communities equal access to technology.

 "The federal government wants to make low-income communities more self-sufficient,"
O'Bryant said.
 "They set up empowerment zones, they set up family self-sufficiency programs, but there
really isn't a
 component there that relates to technology."

 After school one day, the Camfield computer room &mdash; a community computer center that
is
 also open to others in the neighborhood &mdash; boiled with exuberant schoolchildren
playing games
 and surfing the Internet.

 Garfield Williams, 25, who teaches in the center, said the project has kept kids out of
trouble,
 connected infirm residents with medical information and boosted computer skills.

 A resident poll found that virtually all participants used the computers to read news,
learn about health
 and housing, or to shop online. Several said they were training to become Web designers,
 programmers and network administrators.

 Keizer, 24, said the experiment has been a boon for him. A Camfield resident since his
teen years,
 he's found that much of what he does &mdash; whether staying in touch with family, doing
research
 for his graduate degree in education, or e-mailing his professors at Tufts University
&mdash; is easier
 with the technology at his fingertips.

 "It's central to what goes on in the world today," he said. "It changes lives, I feel
like. It has for me."

http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2003/02/23/biz-6-wire23-5650.html
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