Community Engagement

Accelerating broadband adoption in your community can raise quality of life, foster workforce readiness, improve digital literacy, enhance security, and empower local institutions such as government, schools, libraries, utilities, and hospitals to accomplish more with scarce resources.

 W2i Digital Inclusion Framework

 (W2i Digital Inclusion Forum, February 2008)

But igniting a "culture of broadband adoption" in the community requires a focused awareness-raising plan, including a discovery process by a task force of supporters, political buy-in from community leaders, and measurable achievement each step of the way. Non-adopters may simply not be aware of the benefits that broadband Internet can provide and need to be engaged through a transformative process to understand the benefits broadband adoption can mean to them personally.

Broadband Adoption Potential Conversion Points

(FCC National Broadband Plan)

The first thing to know is that you won't be doing this alone.

The W2i Broadband Adoption Toolkit will help you organize the energies of diverse players in your community including; town officials and administrators, economic-development boosters, senior-center leaders, and community activists to define and prioritize:

·   What you want to accomplish?

·   Where adoption is strongest and where gaps exist?

·   Who the non-adopters are:

            -  Low-income families?

            -  Racial and ethnic minorities?

            -  Seniors?

            -  Unemployed workers?

            -  Persons with disabilities? 

·   What the benefits are for individuals, your institutions, your community, or region

·   The local demographics and population densities, existing broadband availability and costs, and areas of  low bandwidth consumption.

 The W2i Broadband Adoption Toolkit helps you articulate a call to action - to energize the effort and design a campaign to build momentum. For more information contact us