Alaska
Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments Type of Grant: TOP Amount of Grant: $449,944 Non-Federal Support: $188,009 Date of Grant: October 1997-September 2000 Project Partners: University of Alaska-Fairbanks, AT&T Alascom, the Yukon Flats School District, and the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments
Contact: Patricia J. Stanley Phone: (907) 662-2587 Email: pstanley@catg.org
The Yukon Flats is an economically depressed and isolated region located deep within the interior of Alaska. Its 2500 residents are scattered across 10 villages in a 55,000 square mile area. To address the need for communication, the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG) established a Wide Area Network with support from the TOP program to provide voice and data communication to each of the villages via satellite.
The network makes Internet access available to tribal leaders, students, and health providers at clinics (often just a small 600 square foot log cabin) and tribal facilities in each village. Health aides, who serve as the only full-time primary care providers in the smaller villages, use the Internet to access health care data and training information, and will soon be able to transmit and receive patient records, data and images via computer and video conferencing to consult with healthcare providers. The network also enabled the CATG regional health center to set up a remote patient records server at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium located in Anchorage instead of maintaining and replacing expensive equipment on site. Local administrators and residents now connect directly to CATG's partner agencies, including the University of Alaska Interior-Aleutian Campus and the Yukon Flats Center, to enable distance learning and training under the Tribal Management Program.
The network has accelerated the rate of community development in the villages of the Yukon Flats through participation with and access to the outside world. "Being more in contact with people from the outside has raised the level of expectations," says project director Patricia Stanley. Apart from the qualitative benefits of increased exposure to the outside world, the network has improved health care and education while simultaneously reducing travel costs.
Alaska
Nine StarT-UP
Type of Grant: CTC
Amount of Grant: $147,999
Non-Federal Support: $44,399
Date of Grant: 2001-2002
Project Partners: Mountain View YMCA; Mountain View Clark Middle School; Mountain View Elementary School; Russian Jack schools served by 21st Century Community Learning Center grant; Mountain View Boys and Girls Club; Russian Jack Anchorage Literacy Project; Russian Jack/ Mountain View Digital Divide Project.
Contact: Barbara Brannum
Phone: (907) 297-5464, (907) 297-5422
Email: barbarab@ninestar.com
Nine Star, a private nonprofit education-training center, established the Nine StarT-Up project in 2001 with support from the CTC program to make technology services accessible to kids in some of the most economically depressed neighborhoods of Anchorage, Alaska.
Nine Star's CTCs benefit an average 1500 children and adults every year. The centers hold basic computer literacy, software and hardware classes for the community at large as well as programs that are targeted toward specific populations such as migrant workers, pregnant or parenting high school students, non-English speakers and welfare recipients.
The Mt. View site's computer repair club trains students to repair and reassemble used computers. At the conclusion of the class, students may take the rehabilitated computer home. The youngest member of the first "Build to Own" class was a twelve year-old who came to the center while his mother was undergoing substance abuse treatment. He decided to enroll in the class and after quickly mastering course material, he assisted others and eventually received a refurbished computer.
