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By Diana Diaz |
Entrepreneur Meera Ghandi told a story of a local fisherman she knows in India: "Mrs. Ghandi!" he called after her one day. "Please lend me $100. I need to get a cell phone. I will pay you back next month, and if I can't you can have your fish for free." She weighed the offer and decided to lend the fisherman the money. It turns out, he would take his cell out into the water each morning, and as the fish was hauled in, he would phone perspective customers and inform them of the "catch of the day". By the time he docked in the evenings, all of his fish would be pre-sold.
Soon he was able to afford to buy his own boats he no longer needed to rent. He bought more boats, and more cell phones. Soon thereafter, he found the need for wireless web. Being illiterate, Mrs. Ghandi asked him how was able to do this. "Oh, I have a graduate student working for me. He contacts people all around the world to buy my fish." The graduate student was his son.
One computer under a tree in India can teach an entire village. One computer in an East Harlem Community Center can teach an entire village.
New York, Feb 1: On January 30, Communications Careers
for Latinos presented its Fourth Annual Latin Media, IT &
Telecommunications conference in New York City. Subtitled "A
New Vision for the Hispanic Community", the underlying sentiment
of the day was perhaps best stated by Felipe Alvarez, Chief Operating
Officer at Con Edison Communications: "Technology is something
that happens after you are born." Like the telephone is
to us, once born after the invention it is simply embedded in
the way you live". He was alluding to the relatively slow
rate of acceptance among older Latinos toward Cyber Communications
as "the necessity that it is to our youth today".
This not only positions our youth at a terrible disadvantage
in comparison to their non-minority counterparts, but separates
them from what has become standard in today's workplace.
Among the nation's poor, households without food in the refrigerator,
telephone service, nor cable television will still invest in
a computer. Why? A computer in a home opens the future to its
inhabitants as of that moment. It is not technology to
our children, but rather the necessary form of communication
today. Internet access, wireless or otherwise, is an essential
component to the growth of our Hispanic Community.
Alvarez acknowledged that lower income communities would need
the technology at lower prices, but added that when he steps
into those Board Meetings, "they're not looking at 'what
are you doing for the community'. They're looking at profit."
Adriana Labardini Inzunza, former Secretary of the Board of
Commissioners, Federal Communications Commission, informed that
the "government is trying to create incentives for Landlords
to include Broadband in the newer housing projects for those
'bottom of the pyramid Hispanics". And, "as technology
gets better, things become more affordable". But, as pointed
out by an audience member during Q&A, "People don't
know what people don't know." That is to say, many poor
Hispanics without access have no idea how to obtain it.
This raises another interesting point: marketing. Youth and
children are "the best targets for marketing, as discussed
in a panel Opportunities and Implications in Emerging
Wireless and Broadband Technologies. Dr. Julio Ceasar points
out that "in this Century of the Navigators, the benefits
of the IT revolution are today unevenly distributed between the
developed and the developing societies. We must focus on the
youth." However, as Jose Palacio, VP of Communications
Careers for Latinos, Inc. noted: trying to market "without
fully comprehending the make-up of our perspective is like trying
to dance congo to the tempo of salsa. Culture is important."
If you don't get the parents involved, you can't reach the kids.
So aside from the financial challenges involved, there is, in
some cases, the language barrier of the parents.
So, how do you market to those poorer Hispanic adults? Antonia
Novello MD,MPH, DrPH, Commissioner of New York State Department
of Health and former Surgeon General shared some statistics,
including one by Jupiter Research which states that on average,
Spanish speakers are accessing 134 minutes per month in Entertainment
online, in comparison to 110 minutes by their English speaking
counterparts. Many women (who happen to make up a large portion
of heads of households among Latino families) "put more
trust in telenovelas" than in any informed resource.
Even though she was speaking on health issues ("Maybe if
he kisses her and she gets the disease of the month, that will
get viewers to the doctors), this could work as a channel for
other information to be readily received.
But perhaps it is merely a matter of accessibility to information
in one's native language that steers them toward entertainment
online: New York is the only state to broadcast in Spanish.
Well, IBM had piloted a program that translates websites from
English to Spanish.: Traducelo Ahora. The results seem
successful thus far, and promising for the Hispanic Community.
With Hispanic adults no longer intimidated by the cyber-world,
so many wonderful opportunities spring into reality --- distance
learning for adults, for example, as George Pena of Dallas
Reads can attest. We can bridge a divide digitally between
the Diaspora Community and the Caribbean. In fact, when AT&T
wanted to wire one of the Eastern Caribbean Islands for the
convenience of its tourist population, they discovered that the
64,000 people living there was an unserved population.
And, "where there is an unserved market, there is opportunity",
according to Carmen Forsman of AT&T Wireless.
And, like the fisherman in Mrs. Ghandi's village, one need not
be computer literate, nor even literate to benefit from internet
access. Dr. Walter Palmas, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical
Medicine, Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital, demonstrated
this with video footage of elderly patients keeping track of
their diabetes via an online connection to the hospital. None
were computer literate before the experiment, and some were not
literate in neither their native nor adoptive language. Yet,
when presented with the opportunity, and taught its uses to suit
their lives, these elderly, Spanish speaking women learned quickly
and worked efficiently with the equipment. In fact, "they're
ready for an upgrade."
And, frankly, so is the collective. The Hispanic community must
be proactive, and not sit back until AT&T discovers that
the Latino Natives are underserved as they wire the Lower East
Side for gentrification. This means asking, and in some cases,
demanding what is needed to compete effectively in society, both
socially and in the workforce. During Q&A, the same audience
participant told of her necessary barrage of phone calls "to
the Chairman of the Board at AOL just to get Roadrunner turned
on at 144th and Grand Concourse."
Incidentally, the fisherman did pay Mrs. Ghandi back.