Detroit Community Technology Project

Building wireless networks in low-resource Detroit neighborhoods, increasing Internet-adoption, while creating pathways for marginalized Detroit residents into the digital economy.

The workforce of the future will require advanced digital literacy and human-centered soft skills to thrive in the digital economy. However, this shift has the potential to reinforce existing disparities that already keep women, people of color, and low-income people out of the digital economy. Perhaps nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in Detroit, which tops the list of 'worst connected cities' nationally, with nearly 60 percent of its residents lacking in-home broadband subscriptions and 40 percent lacking any connection whatsoever. Though the presence of high tech jobs and infrastructure in the city is increasing, these resources are currently concentrated within Greater Downtown--a 7.2 mile area where less than one percent of the city's population lives.

To meet this challenge, the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) creates both educational and infrastructural programs to ensure that more Detroit residents have the ability to leverage digital technologies for social and economic development. The Digital Stewards program trains residents of marginalized neighborhoods in wireless engineering, app development, project management, and community organizing. The Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) scales up the Digital Stewards program in three marginalized Detroit neighborhoods, creating neighborhood-based Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for the redistribution of gigabit Internet connections. These ISPs provide living wages to local residents and infrastructure for digital innovation, in addition to low-cost Internet service. Through EII, DCTP is growing inclusive innovation in Detroit and offering a powerful model for other cities.

- Positive track record and reputation. Since 2009, DCTP has supported the development of community wireless infrastructure in seven Detroit neighborhoods, 11 internationally. We have a positive relationship with Detroit.
- Community organizing. We rely on the relational capacities of longstanding anchor institutions in each neighborhood, which can gain access to backyards, rooftops and other crucial infrastructure for Internet service delivery that other ISPs cannot.
- Non-profit business model. We secured donations of routers and certification training from Ubiquity Networks, bandwidth and infrastructure access from 123Net, and the potential for larger amounts of bandwidth from a Tier 1 provider, Hurricane Electric.

EII networks consist of three parts: a gigabit Internet connection from a service provider, called 'backhaul;' the core network that provides connectivity to the rest of the neighborhood, called 'distribution;' and the neighborhood resident connections, called 'access points' or 'resident installs.' Backhaul connections currently have UPS battery backup systems that continue connectivity 48 hours past the point of an electrical shut off or surge. From the location where the backhaul connection originates, there is a set of network routers and wireless devices that protect the internal network from the public Internet, and beam a wireless signal over the neighborhood, respectively.

The top goals for the EII this coming year are to:
Improve network functionality and advancing network adoption in the three existing EII neighborhoods of Detroit (Islandview, Southwest, and North End).
Develop neighborhood ISP business models to ensure long-term network sustainability
Launch an EII collective as a leadership entity that will bring anchor orgs into the decision-making process around the expansion of EII into new neighborhoods and the procurement of shared resources, such as funding and bandwidth.

DCTP envisions the equitable, decentralized distribution of the Internet through neighborhood-owned and operated Internet Service Providers, in Detroit and other cities nationally. In five years, DCTP will have seeded the formation of a national ISP collective that prioritizes filling the gaps in service of traditional telecoms to empower rural, low-resourced and marginalized-communities to design, engineer, build and maintain their own communications infrastructure. Within five years, the EII model will halve the 'digital divide' in Detroit and beyond, build a base of advanced digital skills in historically marginalized-communities, and keep Internet service affordable and accessible across the board through market competition.

The EII currently serves residents in Detroit's Southeast (Islandview), Southwest (Vernor/Lawndale), and North End neighborhoods, in partnership with three neighborhood-based partner organizations: Church of the Messiah, Grace in Action, and North End Woodward Community Coalition. These three neighborhoods were selected based on their comparatively low income and educational levels in contrast to the Greater Downtown area and for their comparatively high levels of visionary community organizing. Residents of these neighborhoods are prepared to use the resilient, community-controlled wireless networks of the EII to transform inequitable conditions in Detroit.

All neighborhoods are on track to exceed 50 household connections by the end of summer 2018.
All three anchor organizations reported that their participation in EII increased their capacities for program design, staff management, budgeting and financial management, conflict resolution, and evaluation. Each organization also purchased assets to expand their training facilities.

85% of Digital Stewards indicated that DCTP'S programs prepared them for subsequent employment, and 61% of respondents indicated they were able to find a higher-paying job as a direct result of their involvement in DCTP'S training programs.
Three new ISP businesses have been created with the potential for long-term revenue generation.

Diana Nucera is the Founder and Director of DCTP. She has worked in the field of technology education for 14 years, 10 in Detroit. Diana worked with the Open Technology Institute to develop the Detroit Digital Stewards program, the first curriculum and training program for community wireless networks. In 2016 she published the Teaching Community Technology Handbook, compiling 7 years of community organizing, education, and facilitation methods to train educators for the Equitable Internet Initiative. Her expertise is engaging multi-generational, diverse communities and developing popular education materials that empower communities to use media and technology to develop visionary-solutions to challenges.

The EII's core strategy is to scale an organizing and educational method, rather than a product, in order to achieve decentralized, sustainable growth. The strategy employs thorough documentation, expert facilitation, and practical tools that demystify technology and allow people to apply it to their own contexts. Each anchor organization has been given the same set of materials to conduct the Digital Stewards program from DCTP, but it is their responsibility to adapt the methods DCTP shares to suit their unique community needs. This includes participant recruitment, the organizing of community meetings, developing network priorities, adding curriculum components tailored to their mission, as well as hiring and managing their own staff and contractors associated with the EII project. This method of allowing organizational autonomy in deciding what happens on the ground is key to holistically scaling this work.

DCTP will use the support from Solve to:

Purchase routers for the expansion of current networks;
Subsidize EII Anchor Organizations to retain their Digital Stewards and perform installs at a rate that will allow the networks to become financially sustainable by 2021;
Publish a Digital Stewards curriculum, meeting the demand from underserved and marginalized communities around the country for tools that would allow them to replicate the EII model.
Invest in professional development for EII anchor organizations to learn from other ISPs with the goal of intentionally building their organizational structures to stay both financially sustainable and mission-driven.

-That the dismantling of network neutrality rules by the FCC creates a tiered Internet, further undermining low-income Detroit communities ability to access high-speed, high quality digital communications.

-Unethical and unregulated capture of personal data sent over EII networks by governments, corporations, or individuals.

-Not being able to fundraise enough philanthropic support to cover the 'gaps' in 2018, 2019, and 2020, before the networks become financially self-sustaining in 2021, as projected in our feasibility studies.

-Digital Stewards trained through EII are poached by local ISPs who can provide more reliable and higher paying employment than the neighborhood anchor organizations can.