Foundation Journal

As organizations in Kansas City like Connecting for Good and KC Digital Drive have pointed out, Broadband Internet access usually decreases with income levels. And usually the older people get the less they go online. Income and age are two factors determining how connected people are in the digital world. A December 19 article on the Tech Crunch website points out another component of the digital divide: In the developing world, 25 percent fewer women  [PDF] have access to the internet than men. It’s increasingly important to consider all aspects of the global digital divide to ensure that tools are accessible to intended users.

Food pantries and agencies pick up their holiday meats at  Harvesters food bank in Kansas City on December 19, 2014, one of the busiest days of the year. The problem of hunger and poverty is widespread in the U.S., and not going away. Some accounts show the number of people in poverty not decreasing despite the economic "recovery" with  one in six people at or below poverty wages . And it's not just during the holiday season that people go hungry despite the generosity of people and businesses to donate and deliver food. Work at food banks focuses on delivering large quantities of fresh, nutritious produce in addition to dry, canned goods, among many types of food throughout the year. The millions of pounds of food available to poor people, not only helps people make ends meet, but also reduces food waste as indicated in this video story about food rescue in New York City . A recipient of food assistance in New York City said "Sweet potatoes, corn, it'

If you are you looking to learn more about or get involved in efforts in Kansas City to bridge the "digital divide," then consider attending a Digital Inclusion Town Hall on January 16, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. as described in organizers' invitation. Organizers of the 2014 Kansas City Digital Inclusion Summit — a first-of-its-kind event addressing troublesome gaps in residents’ access to computers and the Internet — return three months after that daylong gathering to deliver their official report. The October summit examined trends, discussed challenges and opportunities, spotlighted current inclusion efforts, and shared best practices. Since then civic leaders and other individuals and organizations have been exploring ways to bridge Kansas City's digital divide by providing better Internet access and quality tech education. The town hall meeting also features an announcement of a new digital inclusion coalition and presentation of an action plan. Co-presented by th

"If you're not online, you're not a fully functioning citizen," Michael Liimatta, president of Connecting for Good , said on the Community Broadband Bits podcast this week. The discussion includes an explanation by Liimatta about the "difficulty of connecting low income populations and how Google's entrance into the City has not solved the digital divide but has sparked a deeply needed conversation on how to meet those needs." Listen to the podcast to learn about the efforts to provide resources for Kansas City residents to improve their digital literacy, an essential step to help with everything from completing online job applications to researching personal medical conditions. Podcast audio:

Orchard operation near Waverly, Mo On a recent trip to Columbia to visit my daughter attending the University of Missouri my wife and I took a scenic route through the historic town of Lexington, then went north on highway 65 out of Waverly. The hilly area is home to many fruit orchards, some of which line the roads. Fruit stands and orchard stores are common to the area. North out of Waverly across the Missouri River the landscape changes to flat bottomland containing expansive row crop farms covering thousands of acres. This abundant farmland stretches 65 miles east from Carrollton to Moberly on highway 63. Orchard near Waverly, Mo. From the look of the farm size and large quantities of orchards you would think this provides a satisfactory quality of life for people in the nation's breadbasket, but a story about a food assistance program in the Kansas City Star revealed a different side to this area. The two schools in Carrollton, county seat of Carroll County, "

Technology company Meta Mesh announced this week the expansion of a wireless mesh network in a "struggling neighborhood" in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Community-owned mesh wireless networks like one established in Pittsburg help residents maintain their privacy at a much lower cost than Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Time Warner. The PittMesh effort like the KC Freedom Network built by the Free Network Foundation in Kansas City promises a level of freedom and privacy not found on the expansive (and expensive) Internet maintained by the large ISPs. See the following video to learn about mesh networks in simple terms. Let's be clear - most people don't need or don't know what to do with the higher speeds offered by Google Fiber, AT&T, and now Consolidated Communications' 1 gigabit per second speeds at $69.95 . In fact, organizations like Connecting for Good chomp at the bit to take a single gigabit network connection and cover a whole

During the October 17, 2014 Digital Inclusion Summit (see Jason Harper's report ) in Kansas City noted Digital Inclusion Strategist Angela Siefer identified herself as a “huge, huge advocate of city involvement in digital inclusion” projects towards improving affordable Internet access in low-income neighborhoods. This position represents a challenge to Kansas City to build bridges that close a digital divide in our community. Kansas City would do well to look at the example of Philadelphia and Minneapolis to launch big impact efforts, as Ms. Siefer pointed out in her presentation. And through the efforts of an emerging digital inclusion coalition that includes the KC Public Library, KC Digital Drive and Connecting for Good, a roadmap has been defined to bring city and other resources to this effort. Through a city-run project called "Keyspots" Philadelphia placed 80 free wireless hotspots in operation. Through their efforts they are offering 847 workstations across

While in Tucson recently I heard Arizona Daily Star blogger Angela Pittenger's report on getting low-cost produce from Borderlands Food Bank. This innovative program provides 60 pounds of produce for $10. While the amount of food may be overwhelming for a family, it nonetheless serves as a low-cost option in a family's food budget from the Nogales (Arizona) food bank.   Borderlands' assumed control of the program -- not without controversy -- as described in this report , and renamed it to "Produce on Wheels".

A recently concluded Digital Inclusion Summit in Kansas City highlighted the disadvantage residents face not having home broadband Internet access, especially school-age kids and job-seeking adults. As many as 25% of Kansas Citians and 70% of KCMO public school youth don't have home access , and it's good to know a digital inclusion coalition is emerging from the summit to fix this gap. Another fact from the summit shared during a presentation is that the uneven KC broadband landscape is common to other large metroplitan areas, like a report last week showing "some 800,000 New Jersey households with income of $35,000 or less, only 54 percent had broadband Internet access and 45 percent had no connection at all." So large projects to address the digital divide are needed. One such project by the Obama administration [possible NY Times registration required] proposes a solution to a problem "with fewer than half of American public schools connected to high-speed

This free municipal wifi project in New York City is proposing a public-private partnership to extend Internet access to New Yorkers. The high-speed LinkNYC effort promises to be the world's largest free wifi network, relying on advertising at the wireless access points to pay startup infrastructure and ongoing maintenance costs, plus generate revenue for the city.

Conferences usually provide a welcome break from the daily toil by getting practitioners, activists and experts together to think and talk about the topic at hand. This was the case at the Rural Life Day in 2013 hosted by Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri, and promises to be the case this year with the conference theme "Soul and Soil In A Changing Climate." Join the conference on December 6, 2014 in Jefferson City, Missouri by registering for the day-long event . Here is the full conference statement: How we treat our farms, forests, mineral resources, and waters, how we structure our food systems, even what we eat day-to-day are all within our control and by these actions we are tied to the economic, political, and ecological order of our planet. At its core, the interlocking global environmental, climate, food, and natu-ral resource crises are a moral challenge that calls us to examine and change the way we use and share the earth’s finite res

Many people today advocate for better nutrition options in our communities. Films, books , organizations, even a national Food Day , all describe the problem of obesity and diabetes caused by poor diets. The food bank where I work has a Nutrition Education department that teaches hundreds of adults and kids each year about affordable and healthy food. And advocates do not shy away from pointing out that food purveyors like McDonalds promote "bad food," so much that people are influenced by the message and don't pursue healthy diets. It's clear that "good food" advocates are fighting an uphill battle as fast food operators spend millions of dollars to market their food. The attraction to unhealthy food is especially acute among school-age children, so it's a good thing that an organization like Food Day is promoting a message to kids about good food and diets, even if for a single day. Food Day is "a nationwide celebration and a movement for heal

Bringing up two girls and navigating the blanket marketing to kids -- especially movies -- meant we not only sat through countless Disney movies, but also bought a slew of knock-off toys. I'm sure we "invested" at least $200 in Beauty and the Beast -- toy tent castle, VHD videotape, books, and occasionally an unhealthy "Happy Meal" from McDonalds for the toy. And movie production companies like DreamWorks and Topps continue to market useless toys and food that increases obesity in kids. Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is calling out the two companies for this practice.  If you agree with CSPI, then  take a minute to send a message to DreamWorks and Topps to ask them to stop marketing junk food to kids.   

Comcast announced a low-cost Internet option as mentioned in today's Washington Post. "Under a back-to-school promotion running from now until Sept. 20, new Internet Essentials subscribers will get six months of free Internet access. In addition, those who were previously Comcast customers but were barred from signing up for Internet Essentials because they owed the company money for other services will now be able to subscribe to Internet Essentials — provided that their outstanding bill is more than a year old." Link to the full article -  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/04/comcast-is-expanding-its-10-a-month-internet-program-for-the-poor/?tid=HP_technology

Seems simple enough -- a broadcast radio outlet tries out a new medium like video. Several area radio stations have wandered into the video world with varying success and for various reasons as outlined here. Since the stations -- 96.5 The Buzz , a commercial station; KKFI 90.1 FM , a community station, 90.9 The Bridge , an affiliate of KCPT-TV; and KDHX 88.1 in St. Louis -- all rely on advertising, underwriting, or listener donations for support, so one reason for delving into video is to attract more "paying customers" to their radio broadcasts. Another reason is to connect with people in social media spaces they prefer, especially around music. Any media outlet paying attention to trends in radio and social media would be well-advised to tap into new media in order to maintain their financial base. The problem with this approach is that listeners have many alternative outlets -- for example, Pandora or Apple's newer streaming radio service -- for their listeni

Social and new media pivots around simple concepts -- such as "try out new tools, even at the risk of failing." For KKFI 90.1 FM community radio, which devotes so much energy to creating traditional broadcast media, all produced by volunteer programmers, there's no time for testing the waters of media innovation. But try is what they've done recently -- and not once, but twice. KKFI recently purchased equipment to broadcast live audio events from a remote site, and tried it out at the 2014 Folk Alliance International conference held in Kansas City, Missouri, February 19-22, 2014. With the help of videographer Rick Groom the station also live video-streamed seven hours of music performances. I am going to tell you about how the station video-streamed the performances. The radio station had several options to live stream the video , but chose YouTube Live Events as the outlet. The choice made sense because KKFI already had a YouTube Channel with 39 videos, 12,000 v

On September 30, 2013 KKFI 90.1 FM, a community radio in Kansas City operating for over 25 years, rolled out a way for listeners to follow archived shows using a simple, common approach. This article outlines the steps for other radio stations to do the same. Despite the trend of decreasing subscribers to printed newspapers there is still   strong interest in radio listening , though as many as 40% of people now choose a digital device instead of an AM/FM radio. The station realized that to connect with listeners we needed to move radio content to digital spaces like the website and podcast outlets. KKFI has for some time streamed the live radio signal to the Internet, enabling computer and mobile listeners to tune in from these devices. But many listeners asked for access to copies of the public affairs shows after the original broadcast. The radio station used a combination of paid and donated labor to develop an efficient and low-cost way to archive radio programs, in fact, a

Community media outlets like KKFI 90.1 FM in Kansas City have thrived for decades, maintaining a well-established broadcast model: high-quality studio sound broadcast to a wide geographic area serving the "community." Non-profit community radio station like KKFI, along with college radio and small commercial radio stations keep costs low by renting small studios and operating with few paid employees. These stations attract small audiences but differentiate themselves by focusing on community issues, music and culture. This focus is what defines community media, along with -- in the case of community radio -- maintaining cooperative ownership, not corporate ownership. Community radio operators always knew that "community" was more than a geographic region; it was the various cultural, ethnic, social and artistic communities for which locally-produced radio shows target. KKFI has local radio shows by or directed to African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and immigrant

Three options to provide low-cost or free mobile phone and broadband service have crossed my desk recently. These service plans described below are available for people with a low-income or are trying to save money. Low-income individuals and families strive to stay connected in order to communicate with friends and families, as well as interact with organizations and businesses to support their livelihood. One of the skills for those people seeking jobs, includes communicating with potential employees using an Internet-connected computer to fill out applications and by phone to arrange interviews. Persistent access to a phone and an Internet-connected computer is a minimum requirement for most people to land a job. But with the annual cost for a mobile phone on average at $600 and the annual cost for home-based broadband Internet service between $480 and 665 in Missouri , a person with a low income may find it difficult to seek employment, connect with their social network or par

The promise of dozens of new low-power FM (LPFM) community radio stations is coming true. The spirit of many full-power stations like KKFI 90.1 FM is evident in the pronouncements of many of the stations. Ann Arbor (Michigan) Community Radio hopes to start broadcasting by end of 2014 . The station is gearing up "to promote greater on-air diversity as well as support for local voices and independent music on the airwaves of 'Tree Town, USA'". The station is also working to include independent news, cultural and music programming, as well as serve as a "learning outlet for local students interested in pursuing careers in media and broadcasting." Another group in Michigan one hour from Ann Arbor should have their new LPFM station on-air in the Fall of 2014. The new station will serve the area around Addison Community Schools with "educational and occupational" programming, along with broadcasting local sporting events in a 3.5 mile range. Radi

REC Networks in partnership with Prometheus Radio Project and Common Frequency have advocated for and guided applications for new Low-Power FM (LPFM) stations. LPFM is not new, having helped college and university radio stations for decades, like KCSW-LP on the campus of Culver-Stockton College in northeast Missouri, KDMC (RAGE 103.7) at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, KHBL in Hannibal, and student-run  KZLX on the campus of Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville. Now that the FCC application filing deadline has passed, people can look forward to new radio stations from the several thousand applications filed, including 52 applications in Missouri and 35 in Kansas . Communities through the two-state area can look forward to the broadcast medium coming, including the following organizations. One of the most remarkable application was by the Mutual Musicians Foundation in Kansas City. Prometheus helped them with their application. The organiz

Incredibly, a bi-partisan effort in the Missouri state house of representatives proposes a bill to block SNAP recipients from purchasing energy drinks in Missouri House Bill 1283. Missouri State Rep and bill sponsor Keith English went further when he accused poor people of reselling the energy drinks in a KCTV5 news report . Is there fraud in the food stamps business? Yes, people and small businesses are involved small-time abuse of food stamps, but fraud and corruption is much more costly in other government-regulated programs that favor large multi-national companies, like the $62 million settlement case against military contractor Northrup Grumman and $10.5 against Lockheed Martin  and post-Katrina by government officials and charities . Calls to control food items purchased with SNAP are widespread, like from Time's Christopher Matthews asks "Why would barring junk food be functionally different than barring alcohol?" Many people commenting on the KCTV5 r

Just when you thought you heard all the ways Missouri legislators and the governor have made life worse for poor people they pull another one out of the hat. This last move spells trouble for housing projects for homeless people . The trend over time has caused more despair for low-income and working poor people in Missouri. Here is a list of six ways that have Missouri officials have found to increase poverty for people in the state. 1. Make it difficult to obtain food assistance. In a supposed effort to improve the food stamp (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) and public welfare application process, the Department of Social Services (DSS) in Missouri plans to consolidate 114 family support offices throughout the state . The state also removed an online application, making it more difficult for individuals and agencies to apply on behalf of individuals. While state officials have noted a drop in unemployment and food stamp participation, anti-poverty

The annual point-in-time count of homeless people starts with a flurry of activity. A steadily rising number of men migrate into City Union Mission 's chapel, where the survey is conducted, leading to a room filled with 150 people. I fully expect my perceptions of homelessness to be reinforced; I expect to see and talk with hard-working, clear-eyed individuals down on their luck, without health care, without a good job or money to make ends meet...and alone. In one sense they are just like the people I work with every day, except they lack necessities like a home, a job, health care, transportation. Vickie Riddle, the survey coordinator with Homeless Services Coalition of Greater Kansas City , interviews one of the men to show us survey takers how it's done. After our last instructions we spread out across several tables to conduct interviews about health conditions and lifestyle behaviors in an open room with everyone in earshot listening to the most private information th

A report on Democracy Now! today aired portions of "State of Conflict: North Carolina," a Bill Moyers documentary, which focuses on the "Moral Monday" protests and actions in North Carolina. Moral Mondays have built a movement to oppose Republican-led policies, which have diminished a range of social programs for poor and working people in the state, including Medicaid expansion, cuts to food stamps (aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), education and unemployment benefits, changes to voting rights, as well as laws restricting abortion and support for the death penalty. These policies represent nothing short of an attack on poor people in that state. The Moral Monday movement is planning a massive march in Raleigh on February 8 to "fight back against these extreme policies."  While efforts in the Kansas City area and throughout Missouri don't match the impact of Moral Mondays, there is a groundswell led by Communities Creating Opportun

A collection of social workers and homeless advocates gathered recently in a meeting room at the reStart shelter just of east of Kansas City's downtown to train for the annual point-in-time count of homeless individuals. The count is used to identify the need towards matching individuals with services. I joined the evening training session, parking my car on a side street on the cold, windy night. As I walked around the corner of the large men's and women's homeless shelter, I passed one or two people leaning against the building for a cigarette, and noticed a few others scattered around outside. Inside reStart Executive Director Evie Craig invited people to pizza and lemonade while setting up the slide presentation. After people settled into their chairs we introduced ourselves. The meeting included several clinicians from area agencies and newly-employeed reStart social workers, including a trio of Street Outreach workers sitting in the back. I imagine the young work