FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Marcia Rowe-Riddick
Executive Director, CDSC
718 398 2050 x 8401
Free Wireless Internet For Brooklyn’s Underserved Children
Wi-Fi Hotspot launch set for 11:00 AM on Friday, July 31, 2009
BROOKLYN, NY – July 24, 2009 – NYC’s premier free Wi-Fi installation in a low-income community park, in a groundbreaking collaboration between a neighborhood service organization, Child Development Support Corp (CDSC), and private capital, HARLOWTOWN, will be launched at 11:00 AM on Friday, July 31, 2009 at Classon Playground in Brooklyn.
Attending the ceremony will be Council Member Gale Brewer, Chair of the NYC Council’s Technology in Government Committee/NYC Broadband Advisory Committee; Letitia James, Council Member for the 35th District; Hakeem Jeffries, State Assembly Member for the 57th District.
The Classon Playground hotspot represents a stunning triumph of community action to deliver a public service essential in the 21st century: high-speed connection to the Internet, the gateway to the information economy. The 2008 Diamond Report, commissioned by New York City Council, concluded that a majority of the City’s low-income residents, including many children, remain without broadband Internet access and computer skills.
CDSC and HARLOWTOWN, in conjunction with NYCwireless and tech media, will provide free Wi-Fi and literacy classes to an underserved Central Brooklyn community. “We felt strongly that our kids needed this now,” said CDSC Executive Director Marcia Rowe-Riddick, “We hope that this partnership may serve as a model for other organizations to bring Wi-Fi and computer literacy into their communities without waiting for government funding or support.”
The Wi-Fi HOTSPOT is at Classon Playground, on the corner of Classon and Lafayette Avenues, flanked by the 88th Precinct Stationhouse to the North, Lafayette Gardens Houses to the East, and the Community Partnership Charter School to the West.
CDSC, a 501(c)(3), was created in 1969 to address the needs of low-income and underserved communities of Central Brooklyn. During the late seventies, the organization began preventive and foster care programs to counter the ravages of the drug and gun epidemics in the lives of the families it served. Today, CDSC provides a full range of social service programs for children and families in Community Boards 2, 3, 8, and 16.
HARLOWTOWN is a private NGO that sponsors community projects in Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as furnishing legal services to the needy and to not-for-profit organizations in the US and across the globe.
NYCwireless is a non-profit organization that advocates for, and enables the growth of free, public wireless networks.