The Bristol Place Metanoia Centers is a neighborhood community center located in a former single-family home at 1313 N. Clock St. in North Champaign. We have operated as a Community Technology Center and have 5 PC computers with Windows 7, Microsoft Office, and a full suite of productivity software. We also have broadband, telephone, printing, and fax services available, and a small community meeting space.

We offer walk-in services and work on local and national community organizing and advocacy projects, but currently do not have an active lab and do not offer regular programs due to lack of funding and staffing. We would like to do so again in the future if a sustainable source of funding and staffing can be secured. We would also like to build a separate, larger CTC facility and community space in or near the Bristol Place neighborhood if we can get access to the resources needed to do so.

Rev. Dr. Barnes and the Metanoia Centers has also helped to start a CTC at the Shadow Wood Mobile Home Community, which is adjacent to the Bristol Place neighborhood, just off of Market St. in North Champaign. Shadow Wood is a majority-Hispanic immigrant community, and many of the residents speak English as a second language, or don’t speak it at all. The Shadow Wood CTC is housed in a mobile home that has been converted into a community center, and has five PCs donated by Human Kinetics and Brian Bell’s computer recycling program at Parkland. Three of the PCs are running Windows XP and have a full suite of software, and the other two are Windows 2000 and need some software upgrades. There is also a printer, a scanner, and each computer has speakers. The center has a broadband connection from Comcast. It is currently rarely open to the public, and only when volunteers can be found to come in from outside of the community to staff it.

Over the past few years, a variety of outside groups have attempted to run programs in this lab and engage with the Shadow Wood community more generally, but the efforts have been uncoordinated and the results disappointing so far. A more sustained and coordinated approach is required to get real momentum in this area and to get the CTC up and running regularly again, the beginnings of which will be outlined later in this report.

Rev. Dr. Eugene Barnes is the executive director and founder, and his position of trust and experience within the community, command of the technological, social, and economic issues in play, and his vast experience in activism and advocacy on a regional (with the Central Illinois Organizing Project¹³) and national (with National People’s Action¹⁴) level make him an ideal candidate to engage with the UC2B project as a community advocate and leader.

Bristol Place Metanoia Centers is also ideally placed to act as a conduit for hardware and training for potential FTTH subscribers in the neighborhood, and to help fill the gap left by the loss of the sustainable adoption and CTC portions of the project. Bristol Place Metanioa Centers has set up and run two CTC’s (one at their site, one at Shadow Wood) on an ad-hoc basis over the past decade, and made multiple attempts in partnership with other local community organizations to secure stable funding to sustain and expand them and run more programs. These attempts were ultimately unsuccessful, but the lessons learned and capacities gained could be of great value within the new UC2B context.

Finally, the Bristol Place Metanoia Centers has an interesting conceptual framework to bring to the relationship between the community and UC2B. Rev. Dr. Barnes has promoted the concept of a Community Benefit Agreement¹⁵ for any large development project within the community that utilizes taxpayer funding. This agreement is made between the community, the developers, and the funders before work begins on a project, and is designed to insure that the community sees real and lasting social and economic benefits from the development. This is accomplished by building community participation into a project from the start, for example, through requirements that a certain percentage of jobs on the project go to local workers, and then setting up training, accountability, and auditing structures to ensure that this happens. In light of the opportunities and issues outlined earlier, something like a Community Benefit Agreement could be an interesting avenue to set clear terms of engagement, and to ensure that the community has a voice in the process and is guaranteed a fair portion of whatever gains accrue from the project.

Goal# 1: Get real momentum behind the Shadow Wood Community Center
A number of partners, including people from GSLIS (both students and faculty), CU Citizen Access, Parkland, and the SOAR After School Program seem to be coalescing around Shadow Wood. In the new context of UC2B and the accompanying push to engage the community and do more literacy work to help lay the necessary groundwork for broadband adoption, there is a very good chance that something can finally stick and result in sustainable ongoing programs and engagement at Shadow Wood.

The keys are to get buy-in and participation from within the Shadow Wood community itself so they don’t have to rely on outsiders coming in to have access to their own computers, and to find some source of sustainable funding to keep the doors open and the machines running, which might be easier within the UC2B context where there will be a push for community engagement on technology use and more potential partners and funders for grant applications.
Another key is to find partners, either within the community or from outside, to help with the language barriers, and possibly with the immigration-related issues that could be hindering Shadow Wood residents from participating in the broader community and dialogue.

Finally, the various efforts at engagement with Shadow Wood need some kind of ongoing coordination and memory or archive, especially since they involve institutions that are often subject to rapid turnover and thus deficient at sustained and consistent engagement over time. Again, the impetus of UC2B will help here to keep things more sustained, but Bristol Place Metanoia Centers’ primary role in terms of Shadow Wood is likely in this capacity, along with efforts to obtain more sustainable funding for staffing and outreach, of which, more in the next recommendation.

Goal#2: Secure funding and/or volunteers to staff and reopen a full CTC/Community Center at

Bristol Place Metanoia Centers’ location in the heart of one of the FTTH neighborhoods and experience and knowledge from past attempts to open and fund a CTC put you in an ideal position to seek another round of independent funding for a CTC, and possibly to sustain both the Bristol Place and Shadow Wood CTCs. The new environment ushered in by UC2B is going to open up many new opportunities for projects like this, and help to provide the partnerships, capacities, and expertise it takes to get and keep grant funding for them. People at the monthly UC2B meetings are already talking about how and when to go out and seek funding, whether via grants or private fundraising, to replace the community-focused parts of the grant that did not come through.

Bristol Place Metanoia Centers and their partners can and should be a part of this process, and can even be a leader of it. The loss of the community funding in the main grant was unfortunate, but one possible positive side effect of not getting that money is that if the community goes out and gets its own money, they’re a full partner and have more control and latitude over where their projects and the network as a whole go.

Do another round of CTC grant apps with community and institutional partners and in the new UC2B context. Consult with UC2B, GSLIS, and others for grant-writing support, and for some leads on volunteers for staffing in the interim. GSLIS has a tech volunteer program at the Urbana Free Library and two student clubs that work on community technology issues, and some people could work in our lab or at Shadow Wood if a regular schedule can be re-established. There will be rounds of grant-writing and fundraising at some point to bridge the gaps opened by the parts of the grant that didn’t come through, and our past CTC proposals and activism puts us well ahead of most other anchor institutions when it comes to knowledge of and capacity for this process. Momentum will also be gathering for volunteering around technological literacy CTCs as the project ramps up, and our two CTCs puts us in a good position to take advantage of that groundswell. Getting involved in the day to day process and activities around UC2B is the best way to position ourselves to take advantage of these opportunities, which brings us to the third and final recommendation:

Beyond the meetings and the UC2B structure, the most pressing need is for our community to organize itself around this issue, decide on a program of action and some proposals or demands, and begin to assert itself and push these into the process. There is also a need for the community to organize around expanding literacy and awareness, so that when the broadband does arrive the capacity is there to take full advantage of it and use it to further empower the community in some of the ways described. Perhaps Metanoia Centers and Shadow Wood CTCs can begin to ramp their programs and activities back up over the coming months, and to build alliances and raise awareness with an eye towards that goal.

Date	Place	Activity
09/30/2010	Bristol Place Metanoia Centers	Initial site meeting / introduction
10/07/2010	Urbana Library Douglass Branch	UC2B Policy Meeting
10/08/2010	Bristol Place Metanoia Centers	Second meeting, organizational history and background, referral to Shadow Wood for Technology Education Work
10/08/2010	Shadow Wood Mobile Home Community	Initial site meeting / introduction
10/13/2010	Shadow Wood Mobile Home Community	First CTC volunteer session
10/20/2010	Shadow Wood Mobile Home Community	Second CTC volunteer session
11/03/2010	Shadow Wood Mobile Home Community	Third CTC volunteer session
11/04/2010	Urbana Library Douglass Branch	UC2B Policy Meeting
11/05-06/2010	GSLIS / Urbana Library Douglass Branch	eBlackCU
11/16/2010	Urbana Library Douglass Branch	UC2B Marketing Meeting

Many thanks to Rev. Dr. Barnes at Bristol Place Metanoia Centers for being so generous with his time and wisdom. Thanks also to Mary Blue, the manager at Shadow Wood, for her help facilitating my volunteer sessions at the CTC there. Finally, thank you to my 518 classmates and faculty, who provided good company, many interesting ideas and perspectives, and much food for thought this semester. JARED DUNN