To help understand how broadband tools can benefit our community, Cook County accepted an invitation to participate in the Blandin Foundation’s Minnesota Intelligent Rural Communities Initiative (MIRC) . As part of this project, about $100,000 will be available over the next two years to fund local broadband projects. Individuals and groups will be invited to apply for these funds to do projects that use broadband to benefit our community in some way.
The initiative borrows from the Intelligent Community Forum in identifying five areas communities can use to assess their readiness to realize the benefits of broadband. The funded projects will be expected to fit into one of these broad categories. They include:
- Broadband Connectivity – Focuses on the availability and use of broadband.
- Knowledge Workforce – Looks at education, computers in the schools, and access to higher education.
- Digital Inclusion – Along with levels of internet usage, this category looks at affordability, availability of public access points, and programs to reach elderly, low-income, and low-literacy users.
- Innovation – This area looks at business applications, new business starts, availability of support for business start-ups, and the different business sectors that are represented within a community.
- Marketing & Advocacy – This category looks at the educational activities, advocacy, and documented strategies for realizing a community’s broadband goals.
To start the planning process for the MIRC grant, organizers invited representatives from education, healthcare, government, public library, citizens, and business to begin identifying existing gaps in these categories. The broad areas of opportuntiy that were identified include:
- Education
- Support for businesses; new and existing
- Economic Diversity
- Better Access
- On-line community resources
The next step is to involve a broader audience in refining these ideas down to real project ideas and weighing in on which ones are the most important. The input received from this dialog will be used to prioritize the spending of the grant dollars, as well as lay the groundwork for future efforts.
We are using a tool called Ideascale to help us gather input from the community on these issues.
We have asked some of the folks who participated in the original conversation to start the ball rolling by submitting some of their ideas to the site. We now invite the public to add their own ideas to the mix and provide feedback on those that are already on the board.
Please visit our Broadband Ideascale TODAY and participate in the discussion. http://ccmirc.ideascale.com
This discussion is specifically targeted towards providing constructive input on which types of projects should be funded and supported in Cook County. Please reserve feedback that is not directly related to this topic for other forums. This site will be moderated to ensure the dialog remains on-topic and forward-moving.
