Case Study:  Online Content for Low-Income and Other Underserved Americans

Mission

The goal of the program is to make sure that digital opportunities extend to all young people and their communities, particularly those who are low income and underserved.

Background

Problem to Solve

Proposed Solution

The Children’s Partnership invested nine months of research including focus groups with low-income Internet users across the country, interviews with community technology leaders, an independent analysis of more than 1,000 Web sites, and a review of relevant research and literature.

The research was released in Online Content for Low-income and Underserved Americans, The Digital Divide’s New Frontier, in March of 2000.  It is a Strategic Audit, an analytic tool developed by The Children’s Partnership to survey and analyze a broad field undergoing significant changes. The Audit is designed to look at emerging issues in order to understand the nature of the problem and to identify recommendations for action that can enable policy-makers, community practitioners, and private-sector developers to become part of the solution.

Findings included: At least 50 million Americans--roughly 20%--face one or more content-related barriers that stand between them and the benefits offered by the Internet.

Barriers include:

• Lack of relevant, practical, highly local information such as neighborhood-level job, housing, child care, and transportation items;
• Lack of information written at a basic literacy level;
• Lack of information for non-English or limited English-speaking Internet users; and
• Lack of information that was created in a culturally relevant manner.

After the release of this report (with coverage in The New York Times, USA Today, and many other print, online, and radio publications), The Children’s Partnership followed-up with:

1. The launch of Contentbank.org, an online clearinghouse and resource for online content for underserved communities;
2. Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communties,  an issue update published in 2002;
3. The Search for High-Quality Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Communities: Evaluating and Producing What's Needed (October 2003), a report which included Guidelines for evaluating online content; and 
4. Contentbank Newsblast, a weekly online news service that tracks news and information about online content that impacts low-income communities, launched in 2002.

In addition, we conducted a broad outreach program online, in print, in the media, and through speaking engagements.

Core questions

Timing is especially important as the Internet and related technologies increasingly become the standard way of doing business and accessing opportunities for learning, jobs, health information, etc.  The Children’s Partnership’s research and subsequent activities helped define what was needed and then spurred many groups to focus on needed content which addresses the “content barriers” listed above.

For example, One Economy, a nonprofit organization focused on bringing high-speed Internet into low-income housing, has developed The Beehive, using, in part, The Children’s Partnership's research as a guide for content development.

Could our change model deliver a direct and tangible service to significant numbers of families and young people? 
Yes, in a direct way through our online resource Contentbank.org, we evaluated a substantial amount of relevant quality information on the Web that could directly benefit a low-income community member. While Contentbank.org is directed toward librarians, community technology program staffers, and other “intermediaries,” the Web information is for both staffers and community members. Our content also demonstrates what “quality” looks like and allows others to emulate these excellent sites.

Contentbank and our continuing research on content evaluation and creation has directly helped others develop content for underserved communities.

One example is First Find, a Web site developed by a group of libraries in New York.  This Web resource set out to be the premiere public library example of finding and evaluating content that was relevant and accessible to low-income users as described in The Children’s Partnership’s research.  First Find has been presented to the entire American Library Association to serve as a working model.

Could our change model be taken to scale?
The change model for this project was one of leveraging the findings from our Strategic Audit and other research to help others develop content at the local level.  For example, as e-government becomes more and more prevalent, the content needs to be relevant and accessible by all those who use it.  The State and Federal E-Government report, issued annually by Darrell West at Brown University, started out to measure the extent and effectiveness of e-government Web sites.  In 2004 he added criteria for content including readability and accessibility for those with disabilities. 

Is our model sustainable?
This program is not meant to be sustained in a static form.  This model of change is based on using top quality research to define areas of need that are developing in the digital age, and to leverage our research and online resources to focus public and private resources on addressing the need for online content for underserved communittes. As the community technology field has grown, and as more and more content for underserved communities has come online, the program will transform itself to the next threshold question to be answered in order to continue advocating for digital opportunities for all young people.

Is this change model a new contribution?
The online content project opened up a new area of advocacy at a critical juncture in the unfolding of the Internet.  This research marked the first comprehensive look at the “content gap” and helped fuel understanding and action around this issue in communities across the country.

Will this model help develop new, influential constituencies that could help serve the long-term goal of access to technology for all children (and possibly beyond)? 
We are delighted that The Children’s Partnership has been contacted and has worked with a number of partners and entities involved in online content development, including those from both the private and public sectors.

Does this change model help build public will?
This project builds an awareness that public, private, and nonprofit entities must develop content that serves a wide range of audience, and the research provides the basis and guidelines to do so.