January 27, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The “digital divide” has become a hot topic in philanthropy.
* A new documentary series entitled Digital Divide, airing this month on PBS, examines how income levels, race, and gender affect children’s access to technology both inside and outside the classroom.
With a $300,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, and a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, in New York, the series’ producers have developed a campaign, built around the documentary, to raise awareness about the digital divide. During the past two months, they have distributed more than 40,000 discussion and activity guides to teachers and community leaders. The money has also allowed the studio to help local non-profit groups and PBS stations put together forums to discuss local efforts to increase access to technology.
A Web site accompanying the documentary includes interviews with technology and education experts who appear in the series, statistics and other information about technology access, and annotated links to Web sites that have more information on the topic.
The series was produced by Studio Miramar, in San Francisco, for the Independent Television Service with financing from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. For more information: Go to http://www.pbs.org/digitaldivide.
* Last month, the Benton Foundation and the National Urban League, along with 10 technology companies and foundations, founded the Digital Divide Network to cooperate in efforts to increase access to computers and the Internet.
The network operates an on-line clearinghouse — initially financed with a $250,000 grant from the AOL Foundation — featuring news and research about the problem of unequal access to technology, listings of grant opportunities, and a directory of organizations that are addressing the problem locally. For more information: Go to http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org.
The Benton Foundation also runs an e-mail list focusing on the digital divide. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to digitaldivide-request@list.benton.org. In the body of the message, type the words: subscribe digitaldivide Your Name.
* To celebrate reaching 20 million members, America Online, one of the corporations participating in the Digital Divide Network, donated $20-million to the AOL Foundation to bolster its efforts to increase access to technology.
* A coalition of government agencies and corporations, including the U.S. Department of Education and Bell Atlantic, are holding a conference, “Bridge Builders Conference … Over the Digital Divide,” in Wilmington, Del., on February 17-18 to develop approaches to increasing access to technology in the Mid-Atlantic region. The registration fee for the conference is $99, and some scholarships are available. For more information: Go to http://www.bridgingthedivide.org.
* The U.S. Department of Commerce has created a Web site that provides material from the department’s Digital Divide Summit, which took place in December, as well as reports that measure access to technology in the United States. For more information: Go to http://www.digitaldivide.gov.
