The Rural Womyn Zone's

First Chance Project

Background

The First Chance Project was developed in 2001 by The Rural Womyn Zone to provide an online community with the purpose of overcoming the geograhpical and digital divide that has kept rural women activists and organizations from networking with each other.

The First Chance Project has nonprofit status through The Colorado Nonprofit Development Center, a nonprofit charity exempt from federal income tax.

What the Internet provides for rural women
 

• The First Chance to connect with each other on an immediate and consistent basis.
• The First Chance to collect their own grassroots based body of knowledge.
• The First Chance to form their own press and publish their own news and information.
• The First Chance to operate their own collectives around issues they identify as important.
• The First Chance to develop their own safe and separate discussion areas online.

What rural women want from the Internet

Our surveys of rural women have identified that rural women want the following things from the Internet:
 

• Information.
• Community.
• Connections with rural women in other places.
• Resources relevant to their lives and interests.
• Access to education, including distance learning and training opportunities.
• Ways to organize around issues important to them.
• Validation for their perspectives.
• Recognition for their contributions
• New ways of looking at and sustaining communities.
• Support for lifestyle choices.

Why rural women need Internet access
 

• Rural women are geographically isolated from goods and services, from larger communities and organizations, from opportunities to form groups and organizations, from the ability to consistently gather.
• Rural women live with other kinds of isolation which may include political, cultural, philosophical, lifestyle and career choice differences from those prevailing in their conservative local communities.  Although rural women have contributed substantially to family farms, agriculture and local economies, these contributions are rarely  recognized or rewarded.
• Rural women are often marginalized within agricultural-related and other community and professional organizations and often fill only auxiliary positions. Women who work with rape, incest and domestic violence victim intervention and other programs that challenge local attitudes and systems have little public support on the local level unless they moderate the message.
• Rural women who do not conform to local conservative political attitudes and who are outspoken in their communities are marginalized and disempowered and are unable to be elected or appointed to positions of local influence because their attitudes are too controversial.  In many rural areas, there are no women in elected positions of influence such as town councils, county commissioners, etc.
• Many local grassroots organizations formed by rural women are disconnected from larger groups that could lend support and perspective and there is often little recognition of the global connection to local issues.

What First Chance will accomplish:

I.  Publish news and information for rural women and by rural women.
Through our network of women around the country, we will will set up individual blogs by rural women that they will publish on a variety of subjects including organic farms and food, working in local community systems, linking local and national politics, social justice, the environment, rural criminal justice systems.  We will also publish position papers on this subject.

II.  Overcome the digital divide.
We increase the number of rural women with high speed Internet access through the following:

Training the trainers.  Online training teaching rural women to set up seminars in their local communities to introduce rural women to the Internet and its resources.

Advocacy.  We advocate for increased public access to computer labs in rural libraries and other public places, we support locally-owned Internet service providers, and we call for increasing broad band access for rural areas that are being left behind by agencies and services that require high speed connections for access.

Access to business, education, employment and services.  Some of the things that require access to high speed connections are U.S. government agencies and services such as United States Department of Agriculture, distance learning and other web-based educational resources, web seminars; online meetings and networking; telecommuting and home-based businesses.

Directories.  We launched the first U.S.-based online directory of Spanish-language resources for women victims of violence and published the first online newsletters for Womens Justice Center/ Centro de Justicia Para Mujeres.

III.  Online Training.  Our team includes women who are professional trainers in the fields of intervention and services for rural victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, anti-racism work, building green houses and organic gardening and farming, and others. We have provided online training and will continue to develop this resource as our access to new web-based programs and high speed access increases.

IV.  Networking. We provided a working email list for women working with rural victims of rape and domestic violence.  We provide a general email list for networking and discussion of rural women's issues.

V.  Research, Design and Testing of Project
The Rural Womyn Zone web site went online in 1997 and began collecting online information relevant to rural women. Women Online Worldwide, an interactive community, recognized the potential of the Zone and offered free space on their domain.   In 2001, Rural Womyn Zone had developed to the point that it could stand alone and purchase its domain.  The email lists, chat room and message boards have been created and tested for seven years as interactive methods for rural women.  Everything has been accomplished through online networking.

Key Community Connections

The Rural Womyn Zone has extensive community connections in the US and Canada.  The group includes women with experience in program design, implementation and management; grassroots organizing; community development and advocacy; sustainable agriculture; entrepreneurial business development and politics.  There are authors, artists, and farmers, among others, who maintain professional affiliations.  This diversity and background provides enormous liaison opportunities.

Members of the Ruralwomyn List are the grassroots community base.  The Development Team is made up of list members. The Advisory Board is comprised from Development Team members.

Rural Womyn Zone is a unique resource that is recognized and utilized as a resource by over 300 groups and organizations.  See partial list.

Nonprofit Status

First Chance Project is a project of the Colorado Nonprofit Development Center, a nonprofit charity exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(30 of the Internal Revenue Code, and which is not a private foundation because it is described in Sections 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(a)(vi).

Contributions to The Colorado Nonprofit Development Center for the benefit of First Chance Project are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The Rural Womyn Zone > First Chance Project