Mr. Niels Agger-Gupta, B.A., B.Ed., Human & Organizational Systems, The Fielding Institute, California
Ms. Cyd Strickland, M.A., Human & Organizational Systems, The Fielding Institute, California
This paper integrates the issues of inclusion and diversity studies with telecommunity development. The implications and conceptual difficulties with understanding and implementing ‘inclusive practices’ into telecommunities are presented, as well as some learnings about addressing differences from the perspective of organizations grappling with client and work force diversity issues. We also present a model for understanding the variety of approaches to diversity. The paper includes some ‘best practices’ suggestions for successfully working together, and two case studies of telecommunity developments that address issues of inclusion and diversity.
If Telecommunity is about the interconnections between and among people, then we need to find ways to include and share responsibility for the network among all peoples in a community, particularly those from segments of society who have been excluded from power. We need to learn to understand the abilities, capacities and the needs of all people, including the poor, the disabled, and people from ethnocultural communities. Our own futures are bound up in the successes of all peoples.
Successful and sustainable telecommunity development involves many diverse groups. This diversity extends to the differences between ‘techies’ (who have been the key players in telecommunications technology) and non-technical community people.
Telecommunities could learn much from the experiences of groups, agencies and organizations who have participated in organizational change initiatives related to diversity. There are significant process learnings from these initiatives that can significantly shorten the learning curve for telecommunities who are beginning to grapple with cultural, ethnic and other differences in the community.
In our experience, both with diversity initiatives and in the development of telecommunities, it is clear that good intentions are necessary but are not sufficient to successfully enable diverse groups to come together, work together, assume decision-making responsibility and share ownership of the telecommunity. "Ownership," in this sense, is defined as having decision-making responsibility in the design, development and management of the telecommunity.
This paper will present a model for understanding the variety of responses to community diversity as well as some ‘best practices’ in which attention to diversity can improve the telecommunity development process. Lastly, diversity is just beginning to emerge as an issue for telecommunities, raising many unanswered questions. We will conclude with some of these questions.
"Diversity", simply defined, is all the ways we are different and unique. This includes gender, culture, race, age, religion and ability (among many other domains of individual and group differences). A dialogue that is just in the beginning stages, concerns the values and purpose of community networks; issues such as privilege, power, ethics and social change; and communications beyond simple information exchange. This beginning dialogue includes an understanding of inclusion and exclusion issues and how community diversity plays a key role in telecommunity development. Who is included and who is excluded from participation will have a direct impact on the success of the telecommunity as a community development tool. How the telecommunity views diversity will determine its models for organizing its governance and ownership.
The critical nature of inclusion issues is echoed by the Millennium Report to the Rockefeller Foundation, "Communications as Engagement" (1994). This extensive report found that communications, dialogue, and engagement are the essence of community revitalization, and that the key processes are "multi-stakeholder, collaborative, inclusive, pluralistic and ‘win-win’" (pp.2-3). The report quotes Sheldon Hackney from the National Endowment for the Humanities in the National Conversation Announcement Flyer, "...For too long, we have let what divides us capture the headlines and sound bites, polarizing us rather than bringing us together...."(1994).
How we choose to employ technology is dependent on the relationships among the social forces. Alain Touraine (1988) contends that a communication society must be approached in terms of its social relations. It might seem obvious that the idea of telecommunity is about including people and not just about hooking up computers, but the availability of the telecommunications technology too often places network organizers in the role of a solution looking for a problem.
The image that comes to mind amid all the hype of the Internet as the information super highway is that of a sporting goods store, where people admire the shiny, technological wonders, with their amazing colours, lightweight and durable material composition, and performance statistics. The products, although displayed as works of art in the showroom, are bought for a variety of reasons -relaxation, physical exercise and challenge, social engagement (in the case of competitive and team sports), and in the case of bicycles, rollerblades and perhaps boats, for transportation. Unless money is no object, we usually do not purchase sports items as art objects to be admired.
So too with telecommunities. Telecommunities are not about all the geewiz technology - they are fundamentally about people. They are about how people engage in communication with each other, develop relationships, dialogue about local and global issues, and plan and subsequently take action together. In other words, telecommunities are communities of the mind and imagination, in the same sense that Benedict Anderson (1991) defines ‘community’ as the imagined deep, horizontal, fraternal comradeship among people who identify themselves as a group, even though they may never have seen one another (pp.6-7). ‘Community’ is a shared state of mind, not necessarily of physical proximity.
If a shared set of understandings are the defining factors, then the work that is being done with understanding and managing diversity within organizations and in professional settings should be of interest to the telecommunity movement. But, with few exceptions, the lessons of diversity have not yet carried over into how telecommunities are developed.
The nature of public access networks is primarily defined and usually unwittingly limited by those who start them. Richard Civille (1995) compared this design flaw in telecommunities with the impact of the Ptolemaic earth-centred view of the universe in limiting thought and ideas across many fields of human endeavour. Telecommunications technology has historically been the domain of technical folks. For example, the word, "network", is used to refer to the way computer technology is interconnected and only secondarily, in the telecommunications field, to the systems of linkages among people.
Successful telecommunity development requires the involvement of many groups, not just that of the technologists. This involves reducing fears that chaos will result, and requires an integration of all the ideas so that a collaborative process can develop. A key role in this process is a process facilitator, helping to bring all sides of the needed dialogue together. Technical people need to acknowledge that community expertise is important and essential to the development of their telecommunity. This means that the techies need to give up key elements of their control over the systems.
The development of a collaborative process involving all community stakeholders is made much more complex because the diverse elements of the community are not yet on the Net. Rheingold (1993) discusses how the Internet in North America has historically been predominantly male and white. There are a growing number of exceptions on-line, such as Net Noir, IndianNet and LatinoNet, among others. The phenomenal expansion of Internet users globally means diversity issues will become central to understanding Telecommunities. The role of Telecommunity organizers will be to facilitate equitable and inclusive participation and governance.
Working with diversity is elusive and difficult, in large measure because this involves personal learning and growth. It is not just about how to deal with others. Our success or failure in establishing long-term connections with people from diverse communities is intimately connected with how we see ourselves. Our self-perception is related to our experiences with others, both positive and negative. One’s sense of belonging to a community is a part of childhood development. We are unable to remember a time when we consciously had to decide who we (or our) people were, how we acted (or should act), and also who we were not. We observed and we learned, from our parents, peers and the mass media, how to relate to people who were different, what was acceptable, what was not.
This internalized and mostly forgotten understanding about the nature of identity makes it difficult for us as adults to recognize that learning to work with people from other communities is a two-way street. In fact, effective intercultural communication has as much to do with oneself (me and how I learn), as it has to do with learning about others and their communities. This begins with why one is working on developing communities in the first place. The motivation for working with others is often not simple. Very often what starts out as an altruistic wish to help and better the human condition, unwittingly becomes inequitable and patronizing. Particularly when cultural factors enter the picture and people want to do things their own way, the recipients of the ‘help’ may be seen as being incapable of helping themselves, or worse, ungrateful. This type of help might be useful in emergency relief work, but is patronizing and ineffective for the development of collaborative communities precisely because it places the people helped in an uncomfortable, inferior status and disallows them a voice and action independent of the helper.
Charles Taylor (1994) argues that there are now two diametrically opposed perspectives about the concept of equality: One view thinks ‘equality’ is about treating everyone in the same way, regardless of status, wealth, ethnicity, race, etc. This view conflicts with a newer understanding, particularly involving people from traditionally excluded groups, that treating people identically when they are not at the same starting point makes equality a fraud. This is quite a paradigm shift for people who have grown up with the first view, particularly those for whom the system works. It is very difficult to understand, let alone accept.
There are very real cognitive shifts which need to occur in order to move individuals from ethnocentrism (everyone is or thinks like me) to understanding diverse frames of reference (everyone is, or thinks, in a unique, but continually changing, way which relates to the cultural norms that were part of their upbringing and which creates expectations of how others will act).
Intercultural dynamics form about 80% of all interactions among people, according to George Simons (1989). These dynamics are amply described in the Intercultural communications literature -see for example, Bennett (1986), Hall (1976), Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988), and Hofstede(1980) - which relate to how people have been socialized to think about intra- and inter-personal interactions with others.
These ways of thinking include basic orientations in how people see themselves as an individual or part of a group (often their family or cultural community) or see their life goal as being independent or interdependent to the goals of others. This also involves how people relate to and challenge power, conflict, embarrassment, time, and socioeconomic context, expectations and patterns.
Genuine understanding of others is made more complex precisely because people in the initial stages of understanding others deny that culture plays such a pervasive role in our lives. Bennett (1986) suggests the process of coming to a personal understanding of what he called, ethnorelativism, involves a variety of different ways of thinking about the nature of self and others, understandings which he divides into stages.
In our experience, Bennett’s personal stages of awareness about diversity seem to parallel the variety of approaches to diversity that are taken both organizationally and societally. It is critical for telecommunity people to be aware of the pitfalls and traps involved in some of the approaches that are commonly taken around diversity. Some approaches, due to lack of awareness of the complexity of culture, actually result in greater fragmentation and reinforced stereotypes among people who started out with good intentions. These approaches, in order of most ethnocentric to least, or least aware to greatest understanding of the implications of diversity, are:
Assimilation--This is the mode that historically operates in most societies. Multiculturalism is seen as consisting of "special interests" and "cultural baggage," which is to be disposed of as quickly as possible. People with this perspective tend to see others, the "them", as having ethnicity, but they do not see themselves as having ethnicity. This leads to euphemisms such as, "the multicultural communities." A modest improvement on this is a minimal interest in ethnicity and culture as ‘fun’ activities involving food or ethnocultural festivals. This perspective has become known as "3-D multiculturalism" for its focus on diet, dress and dance;
Golden Rule--Since everyone is ‘special’ I should treat everyone the same. This originates from several (ethnocentric) assumptions: 1. That a level societal ‘playing field’ actually exists where everyone has the same opportunities and chances for success; and 2. That, at heart, we are really all alike, and that everyone around the world must share similar expectations, biases and assumptions about behavioral norms;
Culture-Specific approaches are often a sincere attempt to be ‘objectively’ helpful by finding out cultural specifics to facilitate communication - but not only is the danger of stereotyping extremely high, this can be perceived as a manipulative attempt to get compliance without taking the time to develop a relationship. This approach, however, tends to be what people usually request in diversity training. Cultural specifics without the context of personal understanding about identity development tends to create stereotyping problems.
Parallel Services for diverse peoples are often legitimate and appropriate, but are usually a result of a sense of fragmentation and lack of services. People in the diverse communities use this approach to protect themselves because of their sense that the ‘mainstream’ can’t, or won’t, understand & accommodate them. ‘Mainstream’ service providers also use the existence of parallel services as an excuse not to address diversity issues. It takes real commitment and patience to break out of this pattern.
Righting the Wrongs through affirmative action or employment equity. Even though employment equity, unlike affirmative action, supposedly does not have quotas (‘targets’ being set by organizations themselves), performance, and therefore compliance to legislation, is measured by the percentage increases in the participation or employment of people from various diversity categories. The experience of the authors has been that these approaches, while they can be useful as a catalyst in leveraging changes, often sow the seeds of a backlash against them. The concept that organizations need to reflect the communities they serve in order to be effective is based on sound principles, but is lost by the reaction of people coming from more of an ethnocentric perspective.
A subset of this category is anti-racism training, which is often seen as ‘re-educating white people’ by both trainers and by participants in these sessions. Our experience has been that the means employed to achieve equity and fair representation significantly determines the ends which result. In our opinion, a process which targets certain people as oppressors in need of retraining and others as victims, entirely by virtue of their ethnic and racial backgrounds, suffers from a lack of understanding of what motivates adults to become engaged in a learning process and ignores the complexity of contemporary social identity composed of multiple diversities; and
Multicultural approaches which include:
Valuing Diversity usually means that we need to appreciate the unique gifts brought to an organization by everyone in an appropriate way. The major criticism is that this approach usually does not commit anyone to actually do anything, and may reinforce the perception that attention to the culture of people is ‘nice’, but not essential since it only relates to the "3-D" approach;
Managing Diversity involves a whole organizational process, from an assessment of barriers, issues and status, through visioning and planning, to an implementation phase ensuring that a focus on diversity is a fundamental part of the business of the organization for everyone. How employees deal with diversity is not only valued, but measured and rewarded. Dealing with culture is considered an individual and professional competency required to be able to do the work of the organization;
Leadership Diversity is Ann Morrison’s term (1993) to describe the need to bring members of diverse communities into leadership and management positions within organizations, on top of implementing a managing diversity process; and
Participatory Diversity involves whole communities in an egalitarian partnership in Telecommunities and other public and not-for-profit institutions and organizations, as well as in an organizational managing diversity process.
Note that in the two case studies which follow, the Calgary United Way example is an explicit attempt at Participatory Diversity, while the LaPlaza de Taos case study is more generically inclusive.
I. Calgary United Way
A community network of 23 human service agencies in Calgary, Alberta, facilitated by the United Way and Alberta Multiculturalism Commission (Alberta Community Development), has been working for the last four years on a variety of initiatives around inclusion. This network is helping mainstream service providers in the human services (education, health, and social services) understand the issues of diversity and involve the whole community in the design and delivery of programmes. This has been a massive project involving 3,000 staff and impacting on 75,000 clients of the participating agencies. The agencies have been divided into five ‘clusters’ of agencies of comparable size and complexity or profession (counselling or women’s shelters, for example).
We are now, four years into the process, beginning to see major successes and breakthroughs in participating agencies through the development of collaborative partnerships involving mainstream agencies, immigrant-serving agencies, ethnocultural community groups, funders, and other community resources. With each successive initiative, we have found that it requires a slightly less lengthy process to get the buy-in and commitment from representatives from the mandated system.
The biggest obstacle to change has been hierarchical management structures within many of the established social service agencies - a point noted by the consultants doing the barriers analysis (Allen, 1995). A second obstacle has been the pervasive climate of budget cuts in the public sector, which has had the impact of minimizing the results of the extensive diversity work over the last number of years. Agencies have had to take major cuts in funding, resulting in fewer staff taking on more work, and, in many cases, are not able to meet even their current commitments. This work overload condition means that agencies who are committed to working with the diverse communities are having major difficulties in doing so. It remains to be seen if diversity and inclusion issues become a permanent part of how agencies do business or if the United Way diversity initiative will simply have been an experimental blip in Calgary’s history.
The face-to-face networks are currently in the process of going on-line through the use of sector and profession-specific listserves to continue the discussion with similar agencies across Alberta. The intent is to maximize the communications among the various participants in diversity initiatives, while making on-going dialogue more accessible and cost- effective for change agents in all parts of the province.
It has been a real learning to find out what is useful and what is not, among the facilitators of the process within each agency. It is interesting to note that at the beginning stages of the process, mainstream agencies thought that it was the ethnocultural community groups who had things to learn about Calgary norms. However, in virtually all cases, people found that the process of working together has meant that everyone learns, from all groups.
II. Taos LaPlaza Telecommunity
Real change seems to be the product of taking the time to develop and understand our common issues together. La Plaza de Taos Telecommunity in New Mexico went on-line December 6, 1994. Prior to the switch-on, two round table meetings, which drew in the community at-large, were held to identify and plan major issues for the telecommunity. As a result, community outreach has been a priority since the idea of the telecommunity began over two years ago. La Plaza’s original objectives were, and continue to be, to bring people together in new ways, to provide opportunities which do not sacrifice cultural identity, to promote economic self-reliance, and to provide everyone with access to new national resources. (Finn, 1994)
The organizers have accomplished this by providing countless system demonstrations at social groups, schools, and community forums, through the development of a telecommunity centre which provides twelve hours per day access through 15 terminals, a comprehensive training program for all new users and a state-of-the-art system which addresses many of the local and global needs of its users. Volunteers and Community Champions have been especially involved in the development and lay-out of local content on the system. This collaborative work has been extraordinarily successful. While full statistics are not yet available, 15% of the local community have signed up as users, nearly 40% of users are women, with proportionally representative numbers of the Hispanic and American Indian communities. By building a Telecommunity whose foundation is built on valuing racial and cultural diversity in the Taos community, La Plaza is making real progress in improving the quality of community life.
Work within a diverse community begins with the recognition that systemic exclusions exist, that despite the best intentions of good people, whole communities of people are regularly excluded from public participation because they are invisible, or seen as outsiders and foreigners. As Telecommunity organizers, this means we must go out into the community to identify the diversity there, and participate with diverse peoples to mutually learn how to create collaborative relationships HERE, in THESE circumstances. There is no ‘cookbook’ solution.
This requires hands-on demonstrations showing how the Internet can be useful and relevant, and not just talk. It also requires a commitment to a long-term effort to building relationships and trust. People will participate if they are aware of how the telecommunity can present them with information and contacts that are immediately useful. Providing the education and training to create knowledgeable users of the system is part of this process.
Often mainstream people will make attempts to connect with others in the diverse communities and abandon the effort if they are not immediately successful. Granted, the effort needed to establish such relationships can be overwhelming. Others may conclude these measures to bring new people into the Telecommunity process are unnecessary. Giving up can be rationalized in a way which lets organizers off the hook of responsibility and inappropriately places blame for failure on those in the diverse communities. This often is expressed as, "...they don’t come in to my office, anyway...," effectively discounting the very real need for people to be comfortable, be perceived as an equal, and not be in a disadvantaged position. Lack of technical or computer skills can be seen as a disadvantage, so people need to know that the people skills they are bringing into the telecommunity are of equal value. It is important to be prepared for a disinterested audience in initial conversations - or at least until people can see for themselves what’s on the Net. Community people will be looking to see whether you are serious, or whether you want to sell them something - like so many others in our society.
Strategies which build trust are essential for telecommunity organizers since they do have specific skills and knowledge to pass on to interested members of the community. Knowing in advance that learning about diversity is a long-term process for people, both individually and as a group, makes it more likely that organizers will find appropriate ways to draw the group into the Telecommunity. Learning is a process, and an intangible one at best. People do not learn the same things in the same way at the same rate of progress, particularly around issues so bound up with identity, both personal and social. Once access is provided, people will learn what they need, in their own way. Ultimately, Telecommunity organizers need to recognize the different ways people learn as adults, and become facilitators of that learning using a variety of methodologies.
Enticing one or two people from a given community into the process is not indicative of long-term success. Seeing a few ‘representatives’ from the community may be a good start, but there is a long way to go. Success in working with people from the diverse communities begins when there is active involvement at a decision-making level by a sustained core of people from any given community. This means that the organizational culture of the telecommunity must be welcoming to the point that people beyond the paid co-ordinators have ownership in the success of the network. This is really an issue of equitable power relationships.
Perhaps the starting point to creating an inclusive Telecommunity is with a reality check: how do your user profiles compare with your regional demographics? Are there any groups not represented in your user profiles? Is the Telecommunity dominated by educated white males under 50 (Barlow, 95), like most of cyberspace?
The next step might be investing the time to get to know people in these communities, getting to understand their interests, issues and the barriers facing these groups or individuals. What do they need? What are their issues? These, in the spirit of Brazilian educator Paolo Friere (1968), should be the issues of Telecommunity!
From the available evidence, both on the Net and in the literature, successful telecommunities use a participatory model to include their communities and the individuals within them. This involves learning how best to approach the key individuals within the communities. How do people from these communities meet for public purposes? This may take many different forms - Public round table meetings, personal introductions, community centres, at the school, on the street corner, demonstrations in the markets or at the mall or public parks, and through community groups. Each group will likely have preferred ways of meeting which telecommunity organizers will need to understand and make use of.
Training all levels of users to access the global resources on the Internet is essential. Being in a rural region or in a lower socio-economic category where computers and telephones are a luxury can be a real barrier. Organizers need to think creatively about community resources to promote access and training for people without computers. Can convenient public terminals be provided in libraries, community centres, schools or social service agencies to promote access for all users? Note that using these other community agencies and resources will involve collaboration between the Telecommunity and the agency. The experience of Santa Monica PEN (1993), or the Taos La Plaza Telecommunity, among others, demonstrates that there are ways to provide computer access, whether through the public library, through a ‘tele-centre’, or a ‘cyber-cafe.’
Given the demographics of people actually on the Internet, it is evident that relying on individually owned, home-based PCs to access a telecommunity will leave most people unable to access the telecommunity. Only 20% of households in the United States and 25% in Canada own computers, and these percentages are made up of mostly college and university educated, middle-class white male, baby boomers - not, by and large, indigenous peoples, poor people, or recent immigrants, to name just a few diversity groups.
Power and its distribution is a key issue in working with diversity. Unexamined power structures are at the heart of systemic exclusions. Often, the structures which work for some become seen as the normal way for the organization to function. Organizers need to be really conscious of the following questions: Who has decision-making power in the community or in your Telecommunity? In the context of the telecommunity, who actually makes the decisions, including decisions about funding, equipment, policy and governance? If there is an advisory committee, do they have final say over decisions, or can the telecommunity co-ordinator overrule them? This last question is fundamental because people are either empowered, and have authority to make decisions, or the process is one of co-opting a participatory community involvement. Political neutrality is a must. Grassroots community people, if they recognize they are being co-opted, will drift away to avoid the process. Unfortunately, the people who are often left in the organization are the community power brokers.
Systems need to assess themselves for barriers to participation in their communications, whether it be with the messages they send out, in the graphics and symbols they use to represent their ideas, and in their physical location and layout. We must ask: is this telecommunity fully accessible? Do these symbols and messages truly represent the character and diversity of the community? Are they equally appealing to men and women? Does the Telecommunity vision include people and their issues and concerns, or is it self-referential and only encompass only the technology and equipment? How can the local community issues and variables guide the vision of the Telecommunity?
Next, is the system personally relevant to people? Does it provide state-of the art computer access or is it limping along on Apple IIs? Does it help school kids find information for their school reports or does it simply provide Donkey Kong? Or can someone looking for an abstract of Plato’s Republic find it? Are there forums where safe issues can be discussed in confidence? Can someone researching government land treaties for a disputed piece of land find the relevant treaty information? We must very seriously consider if facilitators are helping diverse users make personal meaning of the uses to which they put the Net, or is meaning imposed on them? In practice, people must have the tools and the training to make the Internet their personal resource library. (Civille, 1995)
Lastly, are there diverse community champions who can work within their own constituencies to bring people into the telecommunity? Are we employing train-the-trainer classes, community forums, and forms of other public outreach to encourage participation? We think with these criteria as broad outlines, and with appropriate outreach work to bring the diverse communities in, telecommunity organizers can find the individualized solutions each community needs. These are new ways of thinking about how we are going to succeed in the coming years, and it is far too easy to say that every community has to find their own way. It is clear that without these new approaches, the disparity between the haves and have-nots will continue to grow. These solutions are going to be determined by each community and need to be collaboratively addressed.
None of this is easy or quick. Telecommunity instantly goes to the heart of creating collaborative structures. The issues of creating community are amplified, accelerated, and made much more intense within the Telecommunity development process. Not all cultural communities can deal with this type of pace and it is the responsibility of the Telecommunity to translate the needs appropriately. Change is slow - often too slow for the community groups who have felt excluded, and threateningly fast for many mainstream people.
Like it or not, the issues of diversity are critical to any kind of long-term stability for on-line communities. People who work in Telecommunities need to accept ambiguity and tolerate conflict as an inherent part of their work in building that community both on-line and face to face. Change, particularly within systems where people think everything is fine, takes time. Successes, when they come, may be hard to recognize, but need to be celebrated by all members of the Telecommunity.
Ultimately, our community networks might have some similarities to the experiment with bicycles in Copenhagen, Denmark in the early nineteen-seventies. Several hundred old bicycles were fixed up, painted white, and simply left across the city for people to use as required. The expectation was that once you were done with the bicycle you would just park it on the corner for the next user. The system relied on group trust, and, for the most part, worked very well. While cultural expectations related to property might make this a challenge in North America, a key stepping stone to the inclusive telecommunity is a higher degree of trust in people as a group.
In this paper we have attempted to discuss the issues of diversity and inclusion as they might apply to telecommunity organizers. We have discussed many of the issues of telecommunity development, taken a look at a model for understanding the variety of responses to diversity, and we have looked at two case studies - the Calgary United Way diversity initiative, and the Taos Laplaza Telecommunity. The issue of ownership is fundamental: the diverse communities need to have a shared sense of responsibility, or ‘ownership’, for their parts of the telecommunity. A variety of ways and ‘best practices’ have been suggested to allow this process to take place.
We need to accept that our "sports equipment" is going to look and feel different for all the partners involved in the telecommunity. The telecommunity will be put to a variety of uses, many of which we cannot as yet predict . Organizers will need to develop a high level of trust in people and communities they do not yet know, and learn to give up control. The trust element is critical as individuals learn to share responsibility for the whole network. Learning to understand one another, past the diversity issue, so that we may be able to help and facilitate community renewal is the goal of telecommunity. The telecommunity can become a key bridge to a self-sufficient, and sustainable community, if we recognize the interdependent nature of contemporary reality. Our shared visions as we work out our relationships through the telecommunity, become the key to making our inclusive community a reality.
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Niels Agger-Gupta is a consultant in diversity and organizational effectiveness with the Alberta Department of Community Development / Alberta Multiculturalism Commission in Canada and is also a Ph.D. student at the Fielding Institute in Human and Organizational Development. Contact: Alberta Community Development, #301 - 525 11 Ave. S.W. Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2R 0C9 telephone: 403.297.8407 (bus.) 403.297.2785 (fax)
Cyd Strickland, M.A. is a consultant in community networks and collaborative online communication. She is currently working with La Plaza de Taos Telecommunity Foundation and is also a Ph.D. student at the Fielding Institute in Human and Organizational Systems. She was the founding employee of Cisco Systems, Inc. Contact: GRI Inc., 3049 SW 116th Place, Seattle, Washington 98146 - telephone: 206.244.2508
For more information, please contact:
Mr. Niels Agger-Gupta at agger@freenet.calgary.ab.ca
Ms. Cyd Strickland at cyd@ix.netcom.com