Announcement from Nancy Stutts of ConnectRichmond:

All –

I’d like to thank our board, Connect members, donors, colleagues and
community partners for supporting ConnectNetwork’s mission to build stronger
local communities over the past 10 years. Some of you were there when we met
in Ebenezer Baptist Church in 2000, when many nonprofits did not even have
email addresses, to invent what became known as ConnectRichmond and later,
ConnectRappahannock and ConnectSouthside. The Network will close its doors
at the end of June; however, the three local networks will continue to serve
their communities and are currently in the process of rebuilding their
technology platforms (see contacts below for questions).

It’s been a privilege to work with you and the many volunteers, staff and
students who worked to build the first social network for good. I am
especially grateful to the donors who took a chance on me, my poster board
of circles that represented the Connect vision and what was then a pretty
radical idea for a Web-based community for information and knowledge to
promote civic action. I thank the Network communities who have driven our
work and the academic institutions that have housed and supported the vision
of a web-based portal: the University of Richmond (the original host) and,
for the last five years, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Though we will no longer staff ConnectNetwork, Liana Kleeman and I will
continue to work in the community through the Wilder School at VCU. I will
serve as Interim Chair for the Master in Public Administration Program,
teach and continue research and Liana will continue our recent work
exploring the local digital divide and digital equity, an issue that emerged
as a key local concern in Richmond’s 2010 Community Summit and was recently
declared a human rights issue by the United Nations. In the last several
months, we have worked with VCU MPA students, a UR Business School class and
those of you in the trenches overcoming inadequate access to information and
knowledge for many in our community.

We hope you will join us for a meeting in conjunction with this work on June
30, from 3:30-5:00 PM, at Richmond Public Library’s main branch to review
what we know about the digital divide in the Richmond region and learn from
those in attendance where the community might go from here. Thank you to the
many individuals who have taken surveys and attended meetings; per your
suggestions to map local assets, we have completed a preliminary map of
computer/Internet access centers in the Richmond region:
http://bit.ly/iD6kFZ If we are missing locations, please email us and we
will add your information.