Citizens for Citizens’ Senior Cyber Café in Fall River:
The Newest IT Access and Education Project at a Massachusetts CAA
Late last summer Citizens for Citizens in Fall River became the
latest Massachusetts community
action agency (CAA) to open
an IT access and education
project. In early 2000, just
two CAAs in the state had programs to help
close the digital digital divide.
Since then, nine more CAAs
have launched such projects,
including three others in 2002 besides Citizens
for Citizens—North Shore Community
Action in Salem, Valley Opportunity
Council in Chicopee, and Hampshire
Community Action Commission
in the rural town of Huntington.
(View the latest profiles of many of
these CAA IT Access and Education
Projects.) And yet another
IT access project is slated
to open in Quincy soon.
Citizens for Citizens’ new project in Fall River is unique among those now at 11 Massachusetts CAAs: its focus is on providing computer and Internet access as well as training to senior citizens. Its Senior Cyber Café is located at 111 Durfee Street in the same building that also houses the Fall River Affordable Housing Corporation. Funding for the Cyber Café comes from Citizens for Citizens, Service to America, Corporation for National and Community Service, Foster Grandparents Program, and Americorps VISTA.
By late April, the new Fall River Senior Cyber Café had already graduated its third class of students, who had participated in a free 10-week course learning computer basics. The class met two hours per session twice each week over this period. As had been the case with the previous two courses offered since last summer, attendance for this class was high, despite some of the worst winter weather in recent memory that discouraged many from venturing out.
“When Shellie (Castro) told me about the Cyber Café, I thought it was a good idea,” Citizens for Citizens Executive Director Mark Sullivan related, “but honestly it has greatly surpassed how successful I thought it would be. The public has responded wonderfully to our Cyber Café and there is a waiting list for future classes.”
Shellie Castro, Citizens for Citizens’ Personnel Director, is credited by her agency as the person who came up with the idea for the new project and pressed for its development.
The success of Citizens for Citizens Senior Cyber Café in its first year cannot be measured only by its high participation levels, but also by the praise it has drawn from both community leaders and the local media.
“There isn’t any reason why any generation should be held back from the wonders of the Information Age,” The Herald News noted in an editorial late last year. “Seniors, after all, are members of the ‘Greatest Generation.’ In their lives, they've faced numerous challenges and seen changes more numerous still. The computer is but the latest thing for this generation to conquer. Results from the first 10-week course at the Cyber Café show that seniors do very well with computers.
“We are very pleased to see CFC doing this kind of work,” the editorial went on to say, “and we are just as pleased to see seniors reaching out into cyberspace. Our applause goes out to both the agency and to those seniors who refuse to stop changing with the times.”
Much more on Citizens for Citizens’ Senior Cyber Café in Fall River can be found on the agency’s Web site in its electronic magazine The Spire, including testimony from participants.
Other IT Access and Education Projects at Massachusetts CAAs
MASSCAP has up-to-date profiles of
many IT Access and Education Projects at Massachusetts’ community action agencies, including Tri-CAP’s Cyber Café @
Malden Square, and new projects in Salem and Chicopee.
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