from the fACTivist Fall 2009
by PENNY GOLDSMITH, Executive Director, PovNet
Back to Main Newsletter page
"PovNet is more than a virtual community; it is flesh and bones with a real heart. It is organic. And if the internet failed tomorrow, connections that have been made provincially, locally and nation-wide would endure."
– Alayne Keough, PovNetter
You might be forgiven for wondering what a website has to do with a discussion about neighbourhoods. But PovNet is so much more than a web site. It provides a home for advocates and community workers who network about anti-poverty issues, and government policies around homelessness and poverty. It is a forum for direct-service workers to exchange strategies and ideas and to vent when they are frustrated with not being able to cut through bureaucratic red tape. It is an online learning network via PovNetU, where advocates and community workers can take courses and interact with other advocates.
PovNet’s community of users is vast. One person might go to the web site and get some information and use it to teach a class. Somebody else might go to the web site to see what’s happening in their community on the events calendar. The site is also much used by people looking for legal assistance on the “Find an Advocate” map. People in rural communities find PovNet particularly useful as they often don’t have the resources that are available in more urban centres.
PovNet has only two rules: (1) there are no stupid questions and (2) it’s always the computer’s fault. PovNet isn’t about the technology; it’s about the community advocates who use it. It is a communications commons. People are taking this technology to use it for their own purposes and to bring it back into their own neighbourhoods. What they do with that information can become a social justice movement.
Visit povnet.org for more information, or email the ESPC Resource Coordinator to join the Alberta PovNet listserv.
Back to Main Newsletter page
|
Friday, 24 May 2013 
