Social Inclusion

Social exclusion refers to the situation in which individuals or groups of people do not have access to opportunities and resources (i.e. internet) that are normally available to the majority of the community and is important to daily activities. The lack of access can over time under- prepare individuals or groups from participating fully in the economic, education, and social activities.

There are three critical areas that must be working in order for the project to be successful. If any one of these critical success factors fails, the project will not be able to meets its overall goals and objectives.

Access to the network
Tutoring and mentoring
Computers for students at home

Objectives

Provide evening and weekend Internet access to the homes of children who attend School where it is not currently available. We recommend filtered Internet access to minimize the exposure of students to improper or non-mission oriented material.
The following objectives are as important as access to the network, but are outside the scope of our proposal. Because they are critical to the project success we will continue to enumerate them in this report.

Provide computers in homes of qualified students who do not have a computer by recycling older donated computers using open source software and browsers for use in the homes at no charge.
Provide volunteer based "home work" tutoring to students in all academic areas to improve comprehension and skills, especially for math, science, writing and reading.
Develop volunteer based "consultants" to provide Computersstudents with ongoing technical support to resolve computer and network issues.
Promote computer literacy training for preschool and adults within the targeted households. (see www.pbskids.com)
Develop community information and resource awareness through volunteer web sites.