The digital divide is the gap between those with regular, effective access to technology and those without.
Mt. Airy Community Computing Center is dedicated to improving society by bringing access to technology to older adults, ex-offenders, women in recovery and children.
An old friend, born in the poverty of Appalachia, provided me with a working definition of poverty many years ago: Poverty is the absence of choices. As a working definition I still subscribe to this definition. Ex-offenders upon release from prison are poorer than when they entered prison. Their life choices have been diminished by the fact of their incarceration.
For a little more than a year, the Mt Airy Community Computer Center (MACCC) has provided computer training to ex-offenders and their young children as part of a larger JOBS PROGRAM which was the brain child of Mt Airy resident Irv Rosenstein. The JOBS PROGRAM begins in prison and continues after prisoners are released in helping them develop skills for the work place. The JOBS PROGRAM expands choices.
MACCC has provided training to nearly two dozen ex-offenders and their children over the past year. In addition, after the successful completion of their training, we have placed a new computer, printer and desk in their homes and connected them to the Internet. The computer training and having a computer in their home is a critical resource for ex-offenders bent on moving forward in their life.
We believe this is very important work.
MACCC's presumption or mission begins with the understanding that closing the digital divide between advantaged and disadvantaged citizens is a critical social justice issue. For adults and children to be truly literate participating members of the community, they must have the technology skills needed to compete for jobs, complete school assignments, obtain consumer, market and political information, make application to higher education and financial assistance and a range of other everyday tasks that are increasingly dependent on knowledge of and facility with computer technology.
Working with ex-offenders from the Philadelphia Prison System is not a task for the faint of heart. Nonetheless, MACCC's work has been, with a few bumps along the road, both productive and gratifying.
What can be said of the success of this initiative to date?
The successful completion of training and having a computer hooked up the Internet in the homes of ex-offenders is certainly a graphic measure of success. But as often is the case with direct service programs, the stories of ex-offenders are probably a better indicator of MACCC's success.