Today I did a presentation with Laura Breeden, Program Director, Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), US Department of Commerce and Denise St. Omer, Vice President of Community Investment, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation about how BTOP has stimulated our work. Here’s the description:
Community foundations can help communities achieve more equitable use of federal investments and do transformative work simultaneously! This session presents two cases of how community foundations are working in close concert with federal agencies to leverage mission-related strategies:
Until it happens to you
The New Mexico Community Foundation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will share how they have worked together to create a disaster recovery fund and a unique partnership with the Santa Clara Pueblo’s tribal leaders to secure federal restoration funds after devastating fires and floods have destabilized the Santa Clara Canyon, the Pueblo’s ancestral homeland. Presenters will discuss how public funds and diverse private funds can be braided to support different aspects of recovery. Catastrophic disasters impact everything and it really takes a village to rebuild the village.
The Chicago Community Trust and The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation will share how they are able to bring expanded use of the internet to low-income neighborhoods and vulnerable populations by capitalizing on the federal government’s 4.7 billion Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). In 2009, BTOP began to expand the nation’s broadband infrastructure by funding 200 projects across the country including 123 infrastructure projects, 66 public computing centers, and 44 Broadband adoption programs for underserved populations. Learn about Chicago’s Smart Communities strategies, Kansas City’s neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach, and how BTOP support for data collection and evaluation helped focus and document the impact of these projects.
Speaker(s): Laura Breeden, Program Director, Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, US Department of Commerce;Denise Gilliam, Recovery Directorate, DHS/FEMA; Daniel O’Neil, Executive Director, Smart Chicago Collaborative, The Chicago Community Trust; Jennifer Parks, President and CEO, New Mexico Community Foundation; Denise St. Omer, Vice President of Community Investment, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation
Slides here:
And some pics from my time in Cleveland: