The Children's Partnership Receives $300,000 Grant, Releases Study On The Digital Divide.

The Markle Foundation has awarded a $300,000 grant to the Washington-based children's advocacy group, The Children's Partnership. The funds will support the group's Bridging the Digital Divide: Online Content for Underserved Internet Users initiative aimed at educating key private and public

"Access to technology is not a gift to low-income people unless it meets their fundamental needs," said Markle Foundation president Zo[ddot[e}] Baird. "We need to understand and encourage the creation of useful content if the technology really is to improve people's lives. There is great potential for the Internet to provide content and services that can solve problems and create opportunities for low-income and underserved communities."

In conjunction with the Markle Foundation gift, The Children's Partnership has released a study entitled Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans: The Digital Divide's New Frontier. The study reports that language and literacy barriers, and a lack of local and culturally diverse information on the Net, present the greatest limitations for disadvantaged communities.

Key findings of the report include:

* 1 in 5 Americans are at-risk of being excluded from opportunities available on or through the Internet due to low literacy and limited English skills often associated with low-income families;

* Lack of access is not the primary reason low-income Americans are not online. Instead, low-income users say they would use the Internet more if there was content that was engaging and useful to them; and

* Low-income users want more localized information and more information written at lower literacy levels.

"The research is clear: there is not the content needed to benefit more than 50 million Americans who are low-income or limited-literacy, or sneak a language other than English," said Laurie Lipper, director of the Children's Partnership. "Markle's 'early money' will allow The Children's Partnership to move swiftly from research to immediate action."

The Children's Partnership will convene a series of meetings for policy makers and industry leaders to discuss ways of addressing the content problems uncovered by the study, such as how to best create search capabilities for low-income communities, how to best use translation technologies, and how to best provide training and technical support in low-income communities. Additional information about The Children's Partnership can be found at www.childrenspartnership.org.