Background | Mission | Organization | Approach | Action strategies | Specific activities
Background
The Alliance for Community Technology was launched in 1997 as a strategic partnership between the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the University of Michigan through its new School of Information. The partnership was motivated by the perspective that information technology has emerged to the point that it could have an increasingly vital role in the Foundations’s fundamental mission to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations.
Although the raw processing power of microchips doubles every 18 months and Internet traffic is doubling every 6 months, there is not commensurate growth in our principled understanding of the current and potential use and social impacts of such technology. Also, although the Internet has the potential to provide data, information, knowledge and human interaction any time and any place, we are a long way from providing it for any one. The Kellogg Foundation sought partners to enhance its ability to better understand and effectively apply fast moving advances in information technology to its core programs, cross-cutting themes, and special opportunities. It also began consideration of ways its grantees could develop greater capacity to use this technology to improve private life and the household, the community, and social infrastructure. WKKF could also enhance is capability to lead by example for other philanthropies in exploring ways to harness information technology to contribute more effectively to the civil society sector.
The partnership was attractive to faculty, professional staff, and students at UM-SI because of the potential for resources and connectivity to link their teaching, learning, and professional practice more directly to community-based and not-for-profit organizations, especially those that serve the most vulnerable in our society. They were looking to enhance opportunities to ground and inform what they do through practical engagement in community settings. Faculty, professionals, and students from other parts of the University of Michigan as well as other universities will eventually also participate in ACT.
Mission
The mission of the Alliance for Community Technology (ACT) is to lead in advancing the use of computing and communication technology globally to serve people (to help people help themselves) through community serving organizations. It is committed to a human-centered focus on the creation, use, understanding, training and dissemination of appropriate technologies to support communities whether these communities are defined by geography, organizational structure or common interest (i.e. whether they are defined physically or conceptually).It will focus particularly on disadvantaged communities.
ACT pursues its mission through building value-adding alliances between the academic world, social investors, and community serving organizations (both individual, intermediaries and coalitions). It will focus especially on building complementary relationships between these entities – trying to create relationships of mutual-self interest which capitalize on the unique capabilities and missions of the various type entities. Various affiliates of the alliance should do what they do best.
Organization
ACT is an alliance which is physically and organizationally distributed. A small, energetic core operation which carries out it mission by creating catalytic, mutually beneficial partnerships (both strategic and tactical/project-based) between academia, social investors, and community serving organizations. ACT itself will be an example of using technology to help support distributed coordinated activities. There will be core partners, initially WKKF and UM-SI, as well as project partners on specific projects such as CTC Net.
Approach
As indicated in Figure 1, the special niche of ACT is to build mutually beneficial relationships between community serving organizations, social investors/funders, and academia. Although we would not rule out working with a individual specific individual community organizations, our usual strategy will be to leverage our work through intermediaries and coalitions of organizations. In Phase I we have identified examples of all of these type organizations that show specific potential to join together in mutual benefit. These include a variety of strong academically-based activities that are making unusual effort to build synergy between the discovery of new knowledge and methodology and its practical use in improving people’s lives. These programs are operating in the "Pasteur quadrant" – a term introduce in a recently published book by the late Donald N. Stokes to illustrate this synergy in the life work of Louis Pasteur – as both a discoverer of fundamental knowledge and its significant application to human kind. ACT aspires to strengthen and broaden such activities as well as promote graduates from information, public policy, social work and technology programs to pursue service and careers in the "community technology" sectors
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Figure 1. ACT at the intersection of three sectors.
Examples of the constituencies we would hope to serve include:
- Leaders of community technology centers (such as those that are member organizations of CTC Net.
- Providers of technical support and applications development for non-profit and social services organizations.
- Program and executive officers of foundations and other sources of support for community technology activities.
- People working on collection of and access to information of use in community settings.
- Students, teachers and researchers seeking experience with and understanding of the impacts of information technology across community settings and contexts.
Action strategies
Our framework for accomplishing ACT's mission involves the following strategies:
- Human Resources for Community Technology Leadership -- Evolve and nurture a training specialization in community technology at UM SI and elsewhere with focus on serving community-based organizations and NGOs. Activities in this area include: curriculum development; social networking; provision of practical experience; assistance with job placement, professional identification with and mutual support; financial aid through assistantships and forgivable loans; special efforts to identify and recruit members of underserved communities into these programs.
- Continuing Education, Communication, and Creating Mutual Understanding between Sectors --Provide opportunities for reflection, continuous education, and capacity building within and especially between the three sectors. Do this through short courses, workshops, study tours, exchanges, and tech transfer.
- Analysis, Integration and Sharing - Monitor, characterize, create frameworks, and contribute social and technical understanding of information and collaboration technology and its application in service of community. This strategy will be accomplished through assessment activities, clearinghouse functions, demonstration (pilot) projects, exploratory projects.
- Stretching and Sharing the Vision of What and How - Envision, discover, and share the transforming possibilities for the application of information and collaboration technology and its application in service of community and the NGO world. There are many community-based organizations with desire and resources -- what they lack is vision and knowledge about what specifically to do.
- Provide or broker direct services to partner members in the area of information technology and its use in their programs.
Specific activities
The specific activities of ACT over the next four years within the framework described above will evolve in response to specific needs, opportunities for leveraging the core resources, and partnership opportunities. We see the following application areas for information technology as particularly germane for the coming years.
- Education, particularly for youth, in both formal and informal (out of school) settings. Technology offers the potential for participatory learning (learning in communities of practice) as well as distance-independent learning opportunities.
- The role of the Internet as public space to support civil society and building and maintenance of social capital.
- The potential for technology to provide leap-frog opportunities in developing countries.
