Since 2004 I have blogged daily for the disability community about Universal Design and travel at www.RollingRains.com. A recent spike in interest motivated me to create a social networking site as an innovation incubator. Projects like My Green Map offer even more potential for our work in Inclusive Tourism. Now we have an emerging need for a site to serve a project being considered for funding by Echoing Green and listed in Ashoka's Changemakers Geotourism Challenge. The site would serve as a hub for three international Centers of Excellence in Inclusive Tourism.

Technology and seniors is topic of the newest blog at the White House Conference on Aging portal. The author, SeniorNet's director Kristin Fabos, recounts her experiences last week in Seoul speaking at the 2005 International Conference for Bridging the Digital Divide. She also paints a picture that's closer to home:

<blockquote>According to the 2004 PEW Internet and American Life Project research, only 25% of adults 65+ have Internet access… Medicare Part D, which goes into effect on January 1, 2006, requires online registration. For something as important as Medicare benefits, to require online registration for a population where only 25% is online…What about the other 75%?</blockquote>

Our organization, SeniorNet, is running the Computer Center at the current White House Conference on Aging. The event blog is  here http://www.whcoa.net/whcoa/

The site's discussion board includes topics on technology. 

Part of what technology does for us in the non-profit world is give us individual voice. Even more exciting, in my opinion, is when it gives the communities we serve voice.

I have been playing with the tools at Common Media setting up a news clip Community (Inclusive Travel & Tourism) at Common Times and collecting bits of interesting video at the site.

 
Now, feeling like I have a personal stake in the project, I am finding reflections on the spread of Social Newsmarking and Citizen Journalism at the site's blog to be illuminating:  http://blog.commonbits.org/2005/10/be_the_editor_s.html

As I sit here participating in Web 2.0 via the blogs of everyone lucky enough to be there physically, a colleague from One Economy sent along a real-time example of the web's potential -- One Economy & Cisco's Katrina Help Center:

www.katrinahelpcenter.org

Here's the e-mail:

Dear Friend,

One Economy is a national nonprofit organization, with a San Jose office, that uses technology as a tool to augment and enhance existing systems and community development activities to better support the needs and potential of low-income people.  Our belief is that through innovative uses of the Internet and by partnering with local nonprofit organizations who are already serving low-income people, we can break through the barriers caused by the social and economic isolation of poverty.