Ruth Williams's blog

On October 12th, 2011, ZeroDivide hosted the panel discussion “Using Technology to Improve Communication in the Black Community” at the 2nd annual State of the Race Conference by BABIP (Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy).

The recent finding that 4 out of 5 of ZeroDivide’s Community Enterprise grantees turned a profit this year – with the 5th poised to do so – has been generating a lot of interest. To get a fuller picture of what this success looks like in practice, our team recently visited one of these grantees, San Diego Futures Foundation (SDFF).

Youth Radio Peabody Award

The staff at ZeroDivide wants to send a huge “shout out” and congratulate Youth Radio/Youth Media International for winning this year’s Peabody Award.

As a program officer at ZeroDivide, I was excited to be given the opportunity to explore creative new ways that encourage positive social change for low income, youth of color in California.

Internet and Broadband access is an important issue for the African-American community (and those who serve it) to be involved in. Not having access to information via the Internet cripples minority and disadvantaged communities even more. This fact was discussed at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) public workshop on Friday Oct. 2, 2009 in Washington DC.

http://www.broadband.gov/ws_diversity.html#reldocs

Is social networking really changing how we create our self-identity? Are we all becoming shallow and voyeuristic?  These philosophical questions plus the $63 trillion dollar question were discussed on Philosophy Talk last week with Stanford professors, Ken Taylor and John Perry and their guest, University of Washington Professor, Malcolm Parks.

The show called “Social Networking” was originally broadcasted on 7/5/09 and was recorded at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. 

ZeroDivide’s grantee MicroMentor, an initiative of Mercy Corps that connects on-line business mentors to burgeoning entrepreneurs, was featured yesterday on KGO-TV business news with Eric Thomas.

The days when informational technology (info tech) and access to it can be viewed as a luxury are over. The poorest of the poor in third world countries view it as a necessity. When given the choice, they will choose the ability to communicate with their families, employers, customers, aid agencies… as important as food and shelter.