A Participatory Internet Initiative in an African American Neighborhood

The widespread use of technology is evident in American society, and it has become a central theme in different areas of life in the 21st century. Citizens have benefited from access to the Internet by being able to rapidly access information regarding health, housing options, employment, recreation, academics and many other areas of living. Although access to and use of the Internet has increased in all racial groups, African Americans as a group continue to have the lowest access to the Internet. This paper describes the participatory implementation and evaluation of an Internet-based intervention in an African American urban neighborhood. The project's Web page provided access to health information and health links. Forty-two Citizen Leaders (CLs), members of a grassroots group, actively participated in the different phases of the community initiative. In this paper we discuss different aspects of the planning of the intervention, its implementation, documentation of impact, maintenance and sustainability. With the introduction of technology also came lessons and challenges worth discussing. Among the challenges included recruitment of Citizen Leaders, network and hook-up problems, and Citizen Leaders' frustration in searching information on the Internet. Despite the challenges, technology became a rewarding tool for many Citizen Leaders and residents. For future directions it is critical to learn from these early efforts in order to appropriately disseminate the use of the Internet in minority communities at the neighborhood level. (C) 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.