Publications

The mission of the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age is to make recommendations to the FCC regarding policies and practices that will further enhance the ability of minorities and women to participate in telecommunications and related industries.

At the June 15 meeting the Constitutional, Broadband and Media Issues working groups presented best practices recommendations. Members of the general public were invited to attend the meeting.

Click here to view a copy of the presentation made by Laura Efurd 

Click here to view archived videos of presentations made to FCC

 

ZeroDivide elected to merge the powerful, popular phenomenon of Hip Hop and the connective thread of information technology to create a new philanthropic model. The report documents the evolution of ZeroDivide's Hip Hop and Social Justice Initiative.

View the digital report by clicking on the image above. We invite you to view the book and spread the word about our discovery process as we learned lessons critical to supporting emerging youth-centered organizational models.

You may also download Hip Hop expert and author Bakari Kitwana's report on the Hip Hop and Social Justice Initiative from a participant's perspective. 

Understanding and using new media tools are critical skills for today’s health leaders. At a recent event, Tessie Guillermo, ZeroDivide President and CEO, was the keynote speaker and discussed Overcoming the Digital Divide and Using New Media to Improve Health for All. New media and health communication tools, including social media, blogs, digital storytelling, video, virtual communities, Twitter, mobile phones and more, provide powerful new ways for leaders to engage with each other, their constituencies and with communities worldwide.

ZeroDivide is working to secure a share of the broadband and related-program funding for its communities from BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunity Program), the federal economic stimulus program. Over the past 10 years, we have invested nearly $50 million in innovative programming that has encouraged sustainable adoption of technology, including broadband, in vulnerable communities.

Measure, Manage and Communicate your social and environmental impact. A presentation by Sara Olsen of SVT Group

Broadband infrastructure is an essential and basic component of today’s global economy. Yet, with only 61% of U.S. households currently connected to a high-speed network, significant parts of the population – especially low-income, minority, immigrant, non-English speaking, rural, senior and disabled communities – cannot fully participate in this digital revolution due to lack of service by private telecom providers, lack of economic resources to pay for access and equipment, and/or lack of education about the relevance of technology in their lives.

Community WiFi is an emerging concept and best practices for deployment and related programming are still being developed. Read the report to learn how sharing key lessons will add to the collective knowledge base and help increase the probability of success of future deployments.

ZeroDivide has evolved through several stages in its short life span.  At the heart of its shift toward community enterprise is the underlying belief that underserved communities can generate their own capital—new or enhanced businesses, jobs and enterprises—to improve social and economic conditions.

Conducted by Blueprint Research and Design Inc., the paper provides an up-close look at what it takes to change how you do business  and illustrates some of the larger trends currently shaping philanthropy. These trends include efforts to build sustainable enterprises, the push for greater accountability, the development of quantifiable measures of social impact, calls for increased transparency, and a move toward closer working relationships between donors and nonprofits.

Investments in technology-based community non-profit enterprises can yield substantial combined financial and social returns. In the continuing quest to measure and document our philanthropic impact, we at ZeroDivide struggle with the same evaluation issues as many of our peers. High on this list is study design and reliable data collection. We offer this case study of the YMCA Long Beach Youth Institute, one of our community enterprise investments, as a contribution to the ongoing discussion over evaluating social returns on investment.

As part of the study funded by ZeroDivide, Social Impact of Voice over Internet Protocol on Latinos, researchers examined Latino awareness and perceptions of VoIP and Internet-based phone services; Latino attitudes about and use of landline phones, cell phones, computers and the Internet; and how much Latino VoIP users pay for communication services compared to those Latinos who do not rely on VoIP options.

CSULA's new policy reports on "Assessing the Geography of the Digital Divide in California" ZeroDivide funded a research grant to build upon prior research on technology isolation in Los Angeles by examining technology isolation at the census tract level for the entire state of California and contextualizing this information within a socio-demographic context. By looking at the entire state, this research looks at variations in the technology index within the context of urban-rural, county-to-county, and metro-to-metro variations. The research will lead to the creation of a California Atlas of technology indicators and an area-based hierarchy/priority list for policy interventions to ameliorate the digital divide in California.

Read the report: http://www.scribd.com/doc/11233703/In-Search-of-Digital-Equity