Greater New Orleans Free-Net:
Diverse Partners Make a Community Network
New Orleans, Louisiana
It takes a lot of work and many partners to make a community network.
In Louisiana, school districts in nine Louisiana parishes, the New Orleans public library, powerful business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, a few individual corporate benefactors, more than 180 nonprofit organizations, and the state of Louisiana have all joined forces to form the Greater New Orleans Free-Net. The free-net helps ensure all residents access to some of the basic tools of the Information Age, including community information, e-mail service, and basic Internet access. The Greater New Orleans Free-Net is a non-profit community computing system, available 24 hours a day at no charge to anyone with access to a computer in the home, at the office, in school, or at a participating library.
At a time when free-nets in many cities are struggling to secure their long-term survival, the New Orleans project could provide some useful lessons on how to survive. Though its own struggle is not yet over, the outlook is encouraging. After just two years of operation, it has attracted 15,000 registered users and now provides Internet connections and teacher training in 126 public and private schools. And, significantly, it has so convinced the Louisiana State Legislature of its value that lawmakers voted in early 1997 to give it $1.1 million to double its size. As a result of the state action, the network soon will reach an area with 2.3 million people, or about two-thirds of the population of the state of Louisiana.
Partnerships Result in Educational and Economic Resources
How did the New Orleans network achieve this success? Executive Director Jessica Bray says a $370,000 TIIAP grant, matched by locally-raised funds, gave the project an important jump- start. During the 1995 TIIAP competition, the New Orleans Free-Net exemplified a project which had strong institutional support, both from the community and from its partners. The numbers of people who would be impacted in the nine-parish region was also impressive. With TIIAP funds, the network was able to begin providing teacher training throughout the nine parishes it originally served. It also produced a CD-ROM Internet training package for teachers. And it formed a "High School Technology Institute," in which 14-year-olds hone their own computer networking skills either by developing and promoting web sites for local nonprofit groups, or by manning the free- net's own "help desk" to assist others who are having trouble finding their way in the online world.
All these projects helped put the free-net in the public eye. So, too, did the free-net's "Greater New Orleans Job Bank" and "Project Opportunities" web sites, which list job openings and certificate and degree programs offered by educational institutions in the region. "The projects have made all the difference," says Bray. "You have got to show people a product, and then you can get them on board."
A key strategy is getting all the partners to invest. Schools, parish governments, and non- profit organizations all contribute to the free-net to help defray the costs. Schools' participation and the involvement of nonprofit groups are important, according to Bray, because they demonstrate a widespread commitment to the project that many potential corporate donors are eager to see. "Business doesn't want to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars to deliver something free to teachers," says Bray. "They want the education system at the table."
On the business-sector side, the free-net receives $35,000 from the Chamber of Commerce, and another $12,000 from the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. It also lined up a few individual corporate sponsors. First NBC Bank provides $50,000 enough to have its name appear on the free-net's home page. Louisiana Land and Exploration provides funds to sponsor a web site dealing with waterways and weather.
Similarly, the New Orleans Levee District, a quasi-governmental body, provides funds for its own web site, which explains the region's complex flood-control system. And the free-net is looking for individual supporters as well: this July, it operated its first on-line fundraising drive.
Community Envisions Library of the Future
Bray sees all these efforts as interim steps. Ultimately, she argues, municipalities will finance free-nets, much as they do libraries. Indeed, she believes free-nets will follow a path paved by libraries. Like free-nets, most libraries were started by philanthropists and other grass-roots groups, she says; public funding came later, as government officials came to recognize the importance of promoting literacy. Today, according to Bray, public officials are starting to recognize that computer literacy is as much a prerequisite for finding good jobs and participating in society as the ability to read and write. Already, she notes, the New Orleans Public Library provides $25,000 a year for the free-net, and the sizable contribution from the state of Louisiana shows support is growing on the state level, too.
"Many of us believe free-nets will become a part of municipal and state funding over the next five to 10 years," concludes Bray. "How to survive until then is the key. Our strategy is to maintain our nonprofit status, utilize corporate underwriting, collect education dollars, and seek more nonprofit partnerships. When you have everybody putting in a little, we all get a lot."
Jessica Bray
Executive Director
(504) 539-9243
jbray@gnofn.org
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications
Last Modified: 18 Dec 97