Information Technology Making a Difference in Children's Lives: An Issue Brief for Leaders for Children

This 12-page resource provides a briefing on how information and communication technology (ICT) impacts and can enhance the lives of children, and explores its use in advocacy for children. It is offered by the United States (US)-based nonprofit, nonpartisan child advocacy organisation The Children's Partnership (TCP).

The brief offers research data and concrete examples that show how digital tools and applications can improve various aspects of children's lives, enhancing their education, health, employment, and civic opportunities. According to TCP, technology has a role to play in the experiences of low-income, geographically isolated, and other underserved groups of children. Areas of potential intersection include: poverty, housing, food security, family economic security, foster care, child care, health, juvenile justice, and disabilities, among other issues. Many of the case studies and statistics provided are particularly relevant within the US context; however, one of the illustrations highlights the potential that ICTs have to connect youth with others around the world. As TCP explains, Do Something is a website dedicated to encouraging and assisting youth to engage in social action around local, national, and international issues, such as teen homelessness, immigration awareness, recycling, animal welfare, global warming, international human rights, poverty, and school violence. The site provides youth opportunities to learn about the issues, connect with each other, and engage in volunteer activities - either online or through organised community-based activities.

However, as the statistics cited within the document make clear, there are digital gaps facing special populations within the US; this divide, according to TCP, indicates a need that children's advocates can help address. One of the core strategies for ensuring that marginalised populations do not miss out on the opportunities offered by computers and the internet is the use of ICT by advocates. TCP cites various examples of ways in which advocacy organisations are responding to the observation that traditional uses of e-advocacy (websites, online surveys and petitions, and fundraising tools) can be strengthened and made ultimately more effective by incorporating new interactive technologies. The report provides examples of the ways in which cell phones and instant messaging are increasingly being used to complement online advocacy efforts, leveraging the the fact that they are mobile and nearly ubiquitous.

To provide a baseline picture of the ways in which child advocacy organisations are working on youth and technology issues and to encourage their greater involvement, TCP surveyed the websites of 55 city- and state-based children's advocacy organisations across the country. They found that the majority of these organisations use ICTs to further their agendas - "transforming how advocates reach, educate, and organize constituencies; communicate messages to policy-makers and the media; research and disseminate information; and raise money to support their organizations and other causes." However, only a small fraction have created specific programming to address access to technology and technology literacy - or, more broadly, how technology affects education, health, and other outcomes for children.

TCP makes the case that groups working on children's issues lobby for changes in public programmes serving children to make them more effective, efficient, and accessible by incorporating ICT. The briefing also emphasises that "broadband (highspeed Internet) has become a prerequisite for digital opportunity. While broadband deployment, speed, and affordability are issues that once seemed unrelated to the world of child advocacy, it is now clear that leaders for children could substantially improve the lives of children by working to make broadband available to every home."

In light of the above picture, TCP provides a "National Digital Opportunity Action Agenda for Children", calling on children's advocates to:

1. "...Establish 21st century skills as a national priority for children and integrate them into teaching at schools, in afterschool programs, and at libraries or other places children spend their time. Invest in technologically sophisticated workforce training programs for young people that are directly connected to the needs of employers..."
2. "...Provide financial incentives to help low-income families acquire home computers and affordable broadband; and encourage their use at home to pursue educational, health, and other opportunities for youth."
3. "...Support the development of model digital literacy efforts, online safety education, and other technology training to help parents guide their children wisely in the online world; and encourage businesses to offer technology training to their employees."
4. "...Support the application of technology to improve the delivery of health and human services; use the Internet to provide information to families about public and private resources; and offer incentives to develop new technology applications that can make education, job training, health care, and social services more effective for children and families and more efficient for taxpayers."
5. "...Create a federal office to manage digital opportunity efforts across government, involve the private sector effectively in digital opportunity efforts, and track progress towards meeting national digital opportunity goals."

The briefing concludes with a list of specific pursuits TCP suggests for children's leaders seeking to help create digital opportunities for children and youth and to apply technology to organise and advocate more effectively. One of the suggestions is to reach out to experts and organisations, such as TCP and others listed in the brief, to help identify how technology can best support their work on behalf of children.