West Virginia Broadband Opportunities Program

Visit the project’s new website: www.futurewv.org

With a $4.4 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, over the next three years the Future Generations Graduate School will partner with 60 volunteer fire departments to set up public computer and learning centers.

Fire department volunteers, with the support of a local person trained as a computer mentor, will manage these broadband learning centers, offer training in basic computer skills, and keep the centers open for a minimum of ten hours per week. In addition, the project will refurbish and sell low- cost desktops and laptops.

West Virginia Fire and Rescue Squad locations

To date, 30 fire departments are confirmed partners, with the majority located in West Virginia’s southern coalfields. Additionally, the organization has trained 56 computer mentors from 20 of these communities.

Other educational partners include the Monongahela National Forest (online mapping); Partnership of African American Churches (chronic disease self-management with online support groups and Project Alert, a substance-abuse awareness program for youth); Johns Hopkins University (disaster resilience), Adult Basic Education, community and technical colleges, and Mission WV (digital literacy and e-commerce academy).

State Fire Marshal Sterling Lewis said the computer labs “will help us return to the days when the fire department was the hub of a community.” He said the labs also will help firefighters and rescue squad personnel take part in remote training programs now being developed by the state, saving thousands of dollars in travel costs to receive certification.

To better understand the data and evidence of the digital divide, Future Generations recently trained a team of eight community interviewers to conduct 780 door-to-door household surveys of computer and broadband use in 26 communities. Although 67% of households in program areas own a functioning computer, only 49% have access to broadband, with 21% using the resource to continue their education and 14% to run home businesses. Copies of these reports are available on the project's website at: www.futurewv.org