Community Partners is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization established in 1992 to support social entrepreneurs and accelerate their ideas into action to advance the public good. As an incubator and fiscal sponsor, program manager, facilitator, and intermediary organization, Community Partners has sponsored and supported more than 550 community projects and initiatives, and has worked closely with community, civic, and business leaders, public sector service providers, and funders in diverse, multicultural communities across California. Community Partners has been working on technology issues as they affect underserved communities since 1995.
The California Community Technology Policy Group (CCTPG) was established in 1998, as a project of Community Partners, to promote social justice through access to and use of technology tools in underserved communities to improve quality of life. CCTPG is a diverse network of organizations representing a broad spectrum of the community, including after-school programs, multi-service agencies, community technology centers, assistive technology centers, consumer advocates, and other organizations.
To ensure that underserved communities reap the economic, educational, health, and civic benefits of using emerging technology tools, CCTPG’s goals are to:
•Develop leadership capacity for community organizations to advocate on their own behalf about local and statewide technology and telecommunication issues;
•Advocate for everyone to have access to, and meaningful use of, technology in community settings; and
•Support community-based organizations, through policy work and demonstration programs, in applying and integrating technology to help achieve their missions and/or to develop and sustain technology programs that benefit their communities.
CCTPG uses a three-pronged approach in working with community and policy decision-makers to craft solutions to community technology problems:
•Working with community-based organizations and community technology programs to develop their capacity to participate in the policy-making process and to create opportunities for them to do so;
•Working with policy-makers and decision-makers in the public and private sectors to help create systems which enable underserved communities to adopt technology;
•Bringing together a broad range of community representatives, government officials, and civic organizations to build consensus on policy solutions to digital challenges and providing equal access to the opportunities of emerging technologies.
CCTPG was pleased to sponsor an AmeriCorps* VISTA member in 2005-2006 together with The Children’s Partnership. We look forward to working with this valuable program again.