There’s a lot of buzz both at home and abroad about broadband access, the power of telecommunications to transform the employment landscape of truly rural communities. Local and traditional industry can utilize the web to sustain and grow business, all from their own town. No longer is moving to urban centers for education and employment opportunities the only answer. The online classroom and marketplace is at your fingertips, as long as you have a signal!… and, guidance on how to use these new tools.

Let’s build the infrastructure… … …

OK, now the signal/connection exists, but how do we ensure individuals and communities are connected/connecting? Is it necessarily helpful? Is it sustainable? Are people becoming more isolated as a result of hunkering down on their computers; are they now leaving the town for better employment opportunities? If so, what happens to the traditional industry – can it sustain itself if the next generation won’t or can’t participate? What new industry replaces the old? The list could go on, continuing to reveal the development issues rural communities confront with or without technology and internet access. Too often, though, technology is defined as being superficial, scary, or, worse, irrelevant, and, so, the opportunities that web connection can provide are overlooked.

What do you hear when people talk about technology in rural communities? What are the assumed pitfalls of increased connectivity through the web or cell phones?

In a recent post, we profiled Shustir – an online business that provides local, small businesses with an online storefront where their products can be connected to larger markets. Shustir is successfully enabling small business owners to stay put while allowing them to market and sell outside their immediate surroundings. Here, we see an innovative, web-based solution that can be used to sustain business and local, traditional industry and, simultaneously, prove that the rural to urban migration is not a necessary path for success. In India, Babajob is using cellphone technology to connect informal sector workers – cooks, maids, drivers, guards, etc. – and employers. And, organizations like Kiva are using the connectivity of the web to alleviate poverty by creating a person-to-person micro-lending platform for individuals and communities around the world. Technology can be personal, direct, and useful. And, really, this is only taking a quick glance at innovative web-based solutions through the lens of changing the employment landscape in rural communities.

What are some websites that you can point to that address employment in an innovative way – a way that may decrease the migration from rural to urban landscapes?

Now, considering the aforementioned websites, there are companies and organizations creating and providing services on the web that indirectly or directly address development and small business issues – they show how access to broadband can be quite a positive tool in changing the employment landscape in urban and rural communities. The key to growing a sustainable broadband infrastructure – plugging individuals and communities into the web – may very well lie in the development of an educational component that works alongside the physical building of broadband access. We can do both: provide the connection and the education.

An educational program that localizes the way technology is introduced and then applied to the daily lives of individuals (professional and social) is very much an essential part of connecting people to and with technology. Offering relevant educational programming around broadband access can support the sustainability of any initiative to connect people in meaningful ways. A local gardener who seeks a strategy to rid his vegetable garden of pesky rabbits may post a request for solutions on an online forum and benefit from the collective wisdom of people within and outside his community. (Yes, pepper spray and mint! Any others?…)

Keeping “internet education” in mind, what classes would you like to have provided? What are some issues in your community, or communities that you have lived in or have visited, that broadband access could or does address?