Grant Received From NMAC Equal Access Initiative

The African Salvation Group was awarded a Gateway PC under the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) Equal Access Initiative Computer mini-grant this year. The NMAC EAI grant came with a full year Internet subscription and a one-year telephone line service. This has brought access to a state-of-the-art techology to our constituents who otherwise would not be able to access the Internet.

Prior to this computer grant, ASG has been serving its constituents in a variety of ways using our old dinosaur PC. Common tasks include helping complete administrative proceedings forms such as Motor Vehicule Id cards, Social Security, school enrollemnt or state and federal income filing.

While the Internet provides the opportunity for people to share educational and intellectual resources, some segments of society lack the computer access, incentives, and training needed to benefit from it. Even in the high-tech economic capital city of the world, New York City, there are entire communities that are not computer literate. The African immigrant community in New York City is an unfortunate example.

With this new computer, the African Salvation Group was able to implemente a program for an entry level computer literacy training. This includes introduction to browsers, Microsoft Office suites components, resume preparation, reasearch and job search. We hope to empower our community members with basic computer skills necessary for modern life.

This mini-grant has considerably improved the way we do serve our community members, especially for our HIV Prevention services. If we can get additional resources we plan to expand access to technology for our community members by openning a Computer Center. The Computer Center will thus be devoted to life-long learning for families and will use computer resources for that purpose.

Exposing our community to a modern technology and providing it with skills to compete in the technologically driven 21st Century is a sound way to ensure that they will be able to improve their way of life. Therefore, the Computer Center will provide to the members of the African immigrant community and people who live in its surroundings the educational opportunities that many affluent people have in their homes.