Grassroots Networking in Austrailia Through eLearning

Continuing on the issue of accessibility, I discovered an interesting and innovative project that's happening in Australia. Not only in this country, but on a global scale, under-served communities, that live both in rural locations and within the underbelly of the urban jungle, face many social challenges due to the lack of accessibility to human services, technology, and media. That's not to say that these communities don't have the same needs as the more privileged portions of the population. In fact, there is perhaps more of a need for access to education and information, since actual resources (such as social infrastructure) may not be available to under-served communities.

The Grassroots Networking Foundation (http://www.grassroots.org.au/)is a website that posts innovative opportunities for technological solutions to social problems. One opportunity was a grant offering by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/.

The objective of the funding is to:
• help community providers, educators and learners utilize e-learning as a tool to increase access to, and participation in, formal or informal vocational education and training,
• target a disadvantaged group (such as long term welfare recipients, return to work mothers or people in remote locations) and use a ‘whole of community’ approach to engage them in learning, through e-learning,
• support communities to be aware of and tap in to existing e-learning resources.

I appreciate this project's sense of social repsonsabilty, and the way they are addressing challenging social problems through technology.