LEXINGTON, KY - Ten years after opening the Urban League Technology Center on DeWeese to help members of the community better understand and utilize technology, Urban League President PG Peeples, with the help of a $1.1 million federal grant, will now be able to take the cause into the homes of those he serves.
The two year grant, according to Peeples, will allow the Urban League to hire staff who's sole purpose will be in-home Web training. "What we will do is hire from the community five people who will be in the administration of Urban League and these will be under and unemployed people from the neighborhood who will then be trained to go back into their neighborhood to work with their neighbors in their households teaching them how to be engaged, how to be involved and how deal with broadband," he said.
Lexington is one of just seven communities nationwide to receiving funding in the federal Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, a component of President Barack Obama's American Recovery Act.
"There are very few things in our day and age economically that are more important than the ability to access and to navigate the Internet. If you're not able to be technologically savvy, if you're not able to have access to that asset, you're really in the position where you can't compete in the economy in the direction (it is going)," Congressman Ben Chandler (D-Versailles) said at a Monday press conference in the Urban League Technology Center announcing the funds.
Another aspect is to ensure that people have the hardware required to access the Internet. Part of the grant covers getting broadband-capable computers into the hands of residents who don't have their own, nor the means to purchase one. The city will be taking care of much of a third key to access when a new wireless network is established later this year over much of the downtown, the East End and Cardinal Valley.
"Connect Your Community' will work hand in hand withÖ the expanded wireless network that the Urban County Government is currently in the process of establishing in several parts of our community," Mayor Jim Newberry said, "to try to spur economic development that in these days in time the more of that we can do the better. It will improve residents' access to vital information about employment opportunities and how to pay bills and to get the opportunity to continue their education."
While the wireless network, announced in January, is being established largely as a public safety initiative with $1.1 million from state and federal monies in collaboration with a $550,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Newberry administration said it is important to make access available if it can be to those who need it, and collaboration with the 'Connect Your Community' program will allow that.