9454817 Stagg Most anomalies occurring in the inner city today, including low levels of educational attainment, unemployment, the destruction of family units, both youthful and adult homicides, robberies and thefts, and gang activities, can be traced to the breakdown of the American community. Our once nourishing communities have now become an encumbrance for those who need them most, particularly African-Americans, Hispanics, and other underrepresented minorities of the inner city. The consequence is that the entire country is suffering. The quest for community today is a quest to return to a community that meets the needs of all its members: one that keeps them safe, and ensures its growth as well as the growth of all its residents. There is a clear need to reverse this trend and resurrect the community. It is also clear that in order to resurrect the community, the community must undergo a complete restructuring process. Community re-structuring is best done through master planning. Such master planning, however, can no longer be expert-driven. It must shift to being community resident-driven. This form of master planning must go beyond simple participation to the point of control of the planning process by the community residents. In order to take control of the community planning process, it is necessary for community residents to gain the knowledge necessary to do the planning. The best way to gain planning knowledge is through distance education. Multimedia-telecommunication technology - a technology that makes use of the computer, expert systems, 2-way interactive audio/visuals, related databases, and networking, to name a few - is the best means of dispensing distance education. The overall goal of this proposed research is to explore ways in which multimedia-telecommunication can assist in bringing back the community to the inner city. To this end, three major objectives are proposed: 1) To use community master planning as the vehicle for bringing ba ck the community; 2) To use distance education as a tool for teaching community residents how to take control of the planning process, and; 3) To use multimedia-telecommunication technology tools for dispensing the distance education and for doing the master planning. A significant difference between this project, and those like the new one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is that it is task-oriented. This prevents the endless wandering associated with such large amounts of information, teaches the participants how to best use the technology, and then lets them go so that they can more efficiently apply it to their problems. To achieve the objectives the following tasks will be performed: 1) develop a participation pool among the residents of the community; 2) develop an Advisory Committee of community and technology experts to help evaluate both the methods and the results of the research; 3) develop the multimedia-telecommunication system; 4) develop, pre-test, test, and evaluate three distance education modules: one teaching master planning, one teaching middle school students how to develop ideal relationships between their schools and their community, and one that teaches families how to develop ideal service relationships within their community. (All of the research will take place within the Harambee neighborhood of Milwaukee. This community is one of the largest in the city and it also has some of the most negative statistics, like unemployment - 25% for African-American males, and so on.); 5) evaluate the research results; 6) disseminate the research to as many communities and conferences as possible, and; 7) develop an on-going mechanism that builds on the test model. The expected results are both short-term and long-term. The research becomes a vehicle for the Pl and other academic faculty, staff, and departments to serve their surrounding communities in housing, health and other services, economics, etc. This will help improve an otherwise weak r elationship between the two. If the research proves successful, there should be measurable improvement in the overall conditions of the community, the school and the family. The interrelationships between the public schools, the family, and the community should improve dramatically. As a long-term expectation, the research should determine if distance education and multimedia- telecommunication can help restructure and revive the communities of the inner city. The overall aim is to make sure that the benefits of this relatively new technology, once again, does not bypass the inner city. The traditionally forgotten - African-Americans, Hispanics and other underrepresented minorities the majority of Harambee community residents (about 95%) will get tools that will help in solving most of the problems of their neighborhoods. Finally, this research should, in its revival of the community, help make the city, state, and the country a stronger and better place to live.
