Pacific Southwest Tech Corps Network
a senior re-employment training and community service placement project
serving California, Arizona and New Mexico
Administered by Visible Light, Inc.
TECHNICAL PROPOSAL
(also available online at
Agency Background
Visible Light, Inc. is a non-profit education agency that provides employment training to adults and youth tech corps training to elementary through high school students. Based in Santa Barbara, California, Visible Light has a training center in the downtown area, hosts trainings at partner agency sites in three states, and operates a mobile training bus that fosters under-served community technology projects. U.S. program service area includes California, Arizona and New Mexico. Funded since 1997 to provide administration and deployment of federal projects, Visible Light has worked under employment training and technology development grants or contracts for: USDA Distance learning and Telemedicine (five grants, three years each in three states), US Dept of Education Technology Literacy Challenge Grant (four years in four counties), DoD Logistics Agency (contract for two years in two states), USDA Children, Youth and Families at Risk (two grants, one community), National Science Foundation (one grant, three countries), US Dept of Commerce and Dept of Interior USGS (contract and grant for regional jurisdiction studies). Visible Light is also an affiliate of the Elderhostel Institute Network.
Visible Light’s programs have historically served low income, limited English speaking adults, geographically isolated and inner city seniors, adults and youth, and the current USDA grant has provided support to expand services into remote rural Native American communities. From the bottom of the Grand Canyon accessible only by horseback, to the inner city streets of Los Angeles, Visible Light assists underserved communities in need of technology empowerment. Working with adults and seniors to increase their employable skills, Visible Light provides technology communications training in basic computer skills, advanced Internet research and communications, GPS and GIS Mapping and spatial data management, digital photography, and video web broadcasting. Working with youth program and community partners, Visible light has established a partnership network across California, Arizona and New Mexico that includes schools, libraries, afterschool programs and non-profit agencies. This combination of experience in employment training, technology empowerment and multi-agency networking combines to place Visible Light in a strong position to administer a new successful Seniors in Community Service Program for the Department of Labor.
Visible Light’s common responsibility in all of the previously mentioned federally-funded grants and contracts has been to develop public access to technologies and to empower individuals to leverage computer communications to improve their earning potential in the workplace. This in turn leads to improving the quality of life in the community’s served by assisting to develop a higher level of employable skills in the local community. Building on this training and program expertise, Visible light proposes to form the PACIFIC SOUTHWEST TECH CORPS NETWORK as an effective training and placement assistance program for low-income seniors.
I.Program Design for the Tech Corps
Seniors represent a relatively untapped knowledge and experience base of tremendous value to non-profit education and human service agencies, but they face the challenge of inadequate preparation to serve in the new information technology-rich environments now prevalent in schools and libraries, and that are becoming an increasingly important part of afterschool and nonprofit agencies employment and services.
California, Arizona, and New Mexico are states seeing a rising number of seniors in part due to the demographics of the post World War II ‘Baby Boom’ generation, and also due to having large ‘sunshine state’ retirement populations. In addition to having a large aging population, the region’s seniors also include remote rural Native American, Spanish-speaking ‘Colonia’ border area, and inner city Black and Asian population. Of the 32,614,341 citizens in the three states, 1,363,575 are over sixty with an average unemployment rate of 6.38% and many have an increasingly difficult challenge finding available senior-appropriate employment and face multiple barriers to re-employment. Hispanic and Native American senior unemployment rates average over 8% up to 23% including Reservation and Colonia border communities. Using available State Labor Dept statistics, it has been determined that Arizona, with a population of 5,199,151 has 13.9% living in poverty and a 5.8% state unemployment rate, a work force of 2,514,500 with 264,946 of 805,613 seniors employed (age 55-74), and of those seniors employed, 5,130 are Native American and 27,236 Hispanic with a combined unemployment rate of 8%. New Mexico, with a population of 1,819,046, statewide poverty level is 18.4% and unemployment of 6.74%, with a population of 161,460 Native Americans and 765,386 Hispanics with unemployment as high as 23.7% by county, and a senior population over 55 of 15.2% or 277,551 that are 55-74 years of age. Infioramtion available on California shows a population of 25,596,144 with 14.2% in poverty, unemployment of 6.6% statewide and 7.0% for Hispanics statewide, 12.1% unemployment for Hispanics over 65 and 10.5% unemployment for Native Americans over 65.
Many of these seniors worked full time in the farm labor and hospitality industry workforce through the late 1990s with little opportunity to receive a college education or computer training. Others have been chronically under-employed over their lifetime and need assistance to reach economic self-sufficiency. In the Native American and Spanish-speaking communities there is also a large limited-English speaking population. The lack of access to higher education, combined with limited English skills, and factoring in cultural assimilation barriers, has made it very difficult for this segment of the aging workforce to have gained computer or technology experience and skills when they were working adults. The proposed Tech Corps can be a solution to this problem and will reap many personal and community benefits for participants.
To solve both the problem of overcoming barriers to low-income senior access to computer communication technology training, and to fill the need for part-time cost-effective staff at partner agencies, Visible Light proposes to form a PACIFIC SOUTHWEST TECH CORPS NETWORK of seniors. The participants will receive employment training, be placed in local agencies for part time employment, and will earn the satisfaction of meaningful employment and increased self-sufficiency as respected technology mentors in their own local communities.
The Tech Corps program will be divided into three regional project areas managed by three professional trainers and job development facilitators with their assistants. The first region will be the California region including urban and rural participants evenly distributed across the state ranging from two placements in small rural communities to 48 placements in larger urban communities, all working in schools, libraries, afterschool programs, churches or non-profit agencies. The second project will focus on inner-city Los Angeles, working closely with in the Los Angeles Unified School District and partner non-profit agencies. The third project will serve the Arizona-New Mexico region, again with small rural towns served by two placements and larger urban area by up to 48 placements. This will allow the program to oversee the 494 placements in California statewide, 400 placements in Los Angeles, and 317 placements in Arizona and New Mexico by managing the program in three project subdivisions. All existing positions will have right of first refusal to continue on with the new program activities and training.
The services provided in the local communities will be based on the unified delivery of award-winning online educational programming developed under USDA, USGS, Dept of Ed and NSF program support. This online learning content, available in English with Spanish language features, provides an important FOCUS for the community service work and gives each host agency a turn-key, federally funded, computer-based learning program that improves English literacy, promotes family learning, develops communication technology skills in the populations least likely to have technology access, and offers community-based learning activities that tie global technology tools into local learning discoveries. The Tech Corps participants will serve as in-demand technology mentors in the schools, libraries, afterschool programs, church youth and adult programs, and at non profit agency partner locations.
The Tech Corps Program will:
1)Train seniors in the use of new technologies to increase their employability, including computer, Internet, GPS – GIS mapping, digital photography, and video streaming.
2)Train seniors to deliver a focused, comprehensive, turnkey distance learning programming that promotes English literacy in public libraries, local schools, and afterschool programs serving youth and adult communities.
3)Train seniors to assist nonprofits in improving their Internet-based communication strategies including use of web sites to tie local resources into the content delivery taking place in the schools, libraries, and afterschool programs, and thereby increase public access to partner agency resources.
4)Simultaneously identify host agency sites that will benefit by receiving a turnkey youth and adult literacy-building learning program delivered by a trained mentor, at no direct out-of-pocket cost to the agency.
5)Place seniors in host agencies as educational technology aides to assist those agencies – schools, libraries, afterschool programs, churches, and non-profits agencies - to improve their services to their local community by serving as technology mentors.
6)Facilitate and supervise the relationships between participants and host agencies, maintain a focus on measurable outcomes from the community service that can be documented in a final report.
7)Promote a 20% - 37% placement rate for the participants in extended employment.
8)Make available an online GIS demonstration map noting locations, occupations, and measurable outcomes of participant employment activities
At Visible light, our experience working with senior, family, and youth populations has shown that it is the seniors who have the time and motivation to learn new computer skills. If given an opportunity to gain these skills and then put them to work in local community service settings, the seniors and their community would receive great benefits – new income for those seniors living at or below the poverty line, new purpose as valuable members of their larger community, and new skills to enhance their own family’s communication abilities. In VL’s USDA / Dept of Ed programs, we have observed that once the grandparents get online and learned to use the Internet to ‘keep up’ with their grandchildren, then the working parents also were exposed to technology. The senior’s access to technology then openes the door technology interest and access at all levels of their inter-generational family.
Under DoL ETA support, Visible Light proposes to train 1211 under-employed seniors in the region of California, Arizona and New Mexico, and to place them in 748 schools, 207 libraries, 110 afterschool programs, 50 churches and 96 non-profit agencies 2003-2004. As the attached chart shows, 894 will be in California, 214 in Arizona, and 103 in New Mexico in rural and urban communities. Of the 1211, 250 are estimated to be speakers of English as a Second Language, 25 will be Native American, 1,000 will be have lived under the national poverty level for several years, and all will be in need of finding local training and employment.
Immediately upon announcement of selectees in May, if funded, Visible Light will offer all existing participants in the regions to be served the right of first refusal for continued participation, and will continue to serve any incumbent host agencies that will benefit from the new Tech Corps program. To fill vacancies, Visible Light will begin working with the local Area Agencies on Aging and Employment Development Department WIA One-stop Career Centers and statewide databases in each county, town or city served in June. These agencies will be an important partner in assisting the program to recruit qualified participants for any open positions. Another arm of the recruitment process will take place by contacting the potential host agencies directly to announce employment opportunities to their local patrons who have an informal relationship with the agency (grandparents of school students, volunteers at the library, etc.). Each applicant will be pre-qualified based on recent income history and aptitudes, and, if selected or exercising their right-to-continuation, will work with Visible Light to develop an Individual Employment Plan. Visible Light will pair up seniors in need of employment training and work with partner education and non profit agencies to form positive host / participant relationships. This will take place on Indian Reservations, in Colonia communities, in remote geographically isolated rural towns, and in urban and inner-city neighborhoods. These new positions will not displace other workers at the host agency and will significantly enhance the services each agency is able to offer. The host agencies will be offered an entirely new package of services that include the provision of a part time senior aide that in no way duplicates other position activities on site. The emphasis of the program services is to assist each host agency to realize a measurable benefit and return on their previous investments in technology, with the guidance of the Tech Corps senior and support from Visible Light.
Eligibility will be determined and documented through an intake procedure conducted in cooperation with feeder agencies (Agencies on Aging, EDD, Senior Centers, etc.) using past income tax documents and employment records, and SCSEP records will be kept on premises at Visible Light. Under SCSEP direction, maximum income requirements will be met, recognizing that the federal poverty level is $8,690 per individual / $11,940 per couple. As a direct result of participation, the senior participants will gain familiarity with basic computer use, will develop more advanced computer skills, and will deliver educational programming as a classroom, library, computer lab or agency aide. Of the 1211 participants, 242-448 will find extended employment in their local community as a result of their new training and workplace experience.
II.Community Services
The Senior Tech Corps will be trained to roll out a specific set of services at each host agency. The host agency will be able to select from a suite of services in advance to tailor the program services to meet their needs. Online orientation meetings for host agencies will take place beginning in June and will be coordinated in advance during May. Analysis of available openings for incumbents will take place May and June with announcements for any non-incumbent open Tech Corps senior positions circulated to Area Agency on Aging, Once Stop and potential partner agencies by the beginning of June to jumpstart the recruitment process.
The training program for SCSEP participants will begin in July and run through September. Trainings will take place in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Flagstaff and Albuquerque. Participants will be paid for 100 hours of face-to-face and online follow-up training and will begin employment immediately following their training, averaging 20 hours a week or 1,000 hours a year. Each position is budgeted for a combined 1,100 hours total.
The advantage of the proposed program is that it is building on an existing educational technology platform that offers the trainees and the host agencies a turnkey implementation program complete with supplies and materials. There is no need to invest SCSEP funds in ‘creating’ a program – all funds can go directly to delivering and administration and delivery of the program. The turn-key educational technology program has been tested and refined under USDA / Dept of Ed funds for the last five years, and is an ideal, comprehensive family English and computer technology literacy format for delivery at the host agency sites. The name of the learning program is Camp Internet, and it has been delivered to over 500,000 youth, adults and seniors through schools, libraries and afterschool programs in California, Arizona and New Mexico to date. SCSEP support will enable an additional 693,000 community members a year in isolated, remote rural to inner city urban communities to benefit from the award-winning Camp Internet learning program – with the incredible added bonus of having a senior member of their community trained to provide support and guidance for the project activities locally.
A. Examples of services at the five different types of host agencies follow:
School Positions: Tech Corps participants will be trained to access and guide students and teachers in the use of an online distance learning program called Camp Internet. The school will have selected which subject areas will be presented, and the Tech Corps will focus on the delivery of those resources. This will take place in the classroom, library, or in the computer lab, with occasional field trips, as determined by the school, 20 hours a week, working with 1-3 classrooms on rotation daily or weekly as best meets the classroom needs. Visible Light has had parent volunteers perform this service in pilot projects in the past with excellent returns. The Tech Corps serves as a guide, helping students to focus on and complete education assignments using the Camp Internet resources. Each classroom will be provided with a hands-on kit of materials that the Tech Corps will bring and will monitor the effective use of, including printed learning assignments with incentive stickers for completion, GPS technology, or digital cameras. Once in the Fall and once in the Spring, the Tech Corps participant will co-host a Community Technology Night on campus to invite parents and grandparents to see the student technology projects and try out the technology themselves. In this position, the Tech Corps serves as a technology mentor, guiding class hour, evening, or afterschool activities as elected by the school principal. The outcome of the service will be the accomplishment of having assisted 100-500 local residents, youth, adults, and seniors, to better understand life-long education opportunities provided by telecommunications technologies. In some cases, afterschool programs held on the school site will also include adult learning components and those adults will receive the same community-based services as the regular classroom.