Colorado
Parker Fire Protection District
Type of Grant: TOP
Amount of Grant: $500,000
Non-Federal Support: $612,212
Date of Grant: October 1997-June 2001
Project Partners: Castle Rock Fire and Police Departments, the Castlewood Fire Protection District, the Town of Parker and the Parker Police and Fire Departments, the Douglas County Sheriff, and the Douglas County Administration. Additionally, other partners include the Phillip S. Miller Library of Castle Rock, the Parker Library, the Highlands Ranch Library, and the Oakes Mill Library of Littleton, Colorado.
Contact: Chief Daniel Qualman
Phone: (303) 841-2608
Email: dqualman@parkerfire.org
Built with support from TOP, the Douglas County Virtual Emergency Operations Center (EOC) provides a high-speed network linking multiple agencies within the Parker Fire District to the Town of Parker Council Seat (located 15 miles away) and the Southwest Metro Fire and Rescue Service. The network enables communication between hundreds of units including the county seat, the sheriff's office, fire fighters, the police force, and the public works department.
Lt. Michael Coleman of the Sheriffs Office believes that the network helps keep decision makers on top of what is going on in the field. At the recent fire in Pine Junction, fire representatives were able to use the network to visualize the extent of the fire and coordinate the movement of equipment from the county to the site. The network is also used to conduct remote training for fire fighters ensuring that trainers do not have to leave their response areas for long periods of time.
Using the same high-speed network, the community library has installed public computer kiosks that provide news and information to county residents. The county continuously finds more uses for the high-speed network. In a recent test, amateur radio operators and a television camera crew beamed signals to the network so that people at the EOC could actually see what was happening at a disaster site. The network has succeeded in improving coordination between Douglas County's emergency response units and meets a critical need throughout the nation for more homeland security.
Colorado
University of Denver Bridge Project
Type of Grant: CTC
Amount of Grant: $491,675
Non-Federal Support: $370,329
Date of Grant: September 2000-October 2003
Project Partners: Denver Housing Authority
Contact: Jeanne Orrben
Phone: (303) 765-4408
Email: jorrben@du.edu
In 1991, the University of Denver and the Denver Public Housing Department joined together to establish the Bridge Project, a community based program in public housing developments. Nine years later, in 2000, a CTC grant enabled the Bridge Project to provide technology training for its participants in three of its centers.
The Columbine CTC, located in a Southwest Denver public housing development, logged 160 visits and 285 hours of training in a single month earlier this year. In one class, six-year-olds are given monthly projects that require the use of software and the Internet. In a project on the environment, children created a web site that included digital photographs of neighborhood cleanup activities. Other courses offered provide basic computer training for adults; while more advanced classes can teach Excel, Access, Word.
For families who live on federally funded welfare programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Bridge Project provides workforce skills and credentials that lead to financial independence. Mary, a resident at Columbine's public housing development who had never used a computer or completed high school, signed up for GED preparation classes at the Columbine CTC and enrolled her two sons in computer classes. Once she completed her GED, Mary went on to learn Word, Excel and Access, and is now working as an administrative assistant for the Bridge Project. She is no longer dependent on TANF support.
